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Alexandre Kojeve Introduction To The Reading of Hegel Lectures On The Phenomenology of Spirit 2
Alexandre Kojeve Introduction To The Reading of Hegel Lectures On The Phenomenology of Spirit 2
TO THE
READING
OF HEGEL
LECTURES O N THE
PHENOM ENOLOGY OF SPIRIT
ALEXANDRE KOJÈVE
A gora Paperback Editions
GENERAL ED ITO R: ALLAN BLOOM
Introduction to
the Reading o f Hegel
Agora Paperback Editions
G eneral E d it o r : A lla n B lo o m
BY A L E X A N D R E KOJEVE
LECTURES ON THE
Phenomenology o f Spirit
9 Paperback printing 10 8
Alexandre Kojève
I9 0 2 -I9 6 8
Gentlemen! W e find ourselves in an important ep
och, in a fermentation, in which Spirit has made
a leap forward, has gone beyond its previous con
crete form and acquired a new one. The whole
mass of ideas and concepts that have been current
until now, the very bonds of the world, are dis
solved and collapsing into themselves like a vision
in a dream. A new emergence of Spirit is at hand;
philosophy must be the first to hail its appearance
and recognize it, while others, resisting impotently,
adhere to the past, and the majority unconsciously
constitute the matter in which it makes its appear
ance. But philosophy, in recognizing it as what is
eternal, must pay homage to it.
Hegel, Lectures at Jena of 1806,
final speech
vii
Editor*9 Introduction
Kojève is the most thoughtful, the most learned, the most pro
fo u n d of those Marxists who, dissatisfied with the thinness of
IMarx’s account of the human and metaphysical grounds of his
teaching, turned to Hegel as the truly philosophic source of that
teaching. Although he made no effort at publicizing his reflections,
the superior force of his interpretations imposed them willy-nilly
on those who heard him. For this reason, anyone who wishes to
understand the sense of that mixture of Marxism and Existentialism
which characterizes contemporary radicalism must turn to Kojève.
From him one can learn both the implications and the necessary
presuppositions of historicist philosophy; he elaborates what the
world must be like if terms such as freedom, work, and creativity
are to have a rational content and be parts of a coherent under
standing. It would, then, behoove any follower of the new version
of the left who wishes to think through the meaning of his own
action to study that thinker who is at its origin.
However, Kojève is above all a philosopher—which, at the least,
means that he is primarily interested in the truth, the comprehen
sive truth. His passion for clarity is more powerful than his passion
for changing the world. The charm of political solutions does not
cause him to forget the need to present an adequate account of the
rational basis of those solutions, and this removes him from the al
ways distorted atmosphere of active commitment. He despises those
intellectuals who respond to the demands of the contemporary
audience and give the appearance of philosophic seriousness with
out raising the kinds of questions which would bore that audience
or be repugnant to it. A certain sense of the inevitability of this
kind of abuse—of the conversion of philosophy into ideology—is,
perhaps, at the root of his distaste for publication. His work has
been private and has, in large measure, been communicated only to
friends. And the core of that work is the careful and scholarly
study of Hegel.
Because he is a serious man, Kojève has never sought to be orig
inal, and his originality has consisted in his search for the truth in
the thought of wise men of the past. His interpretation has made
Hegel an important alternative again, and showed how much we
have to learn from him at a time when he seemed no longer of
living significance. Kojève accomplished this revival of interest in
Hegel not by adapting him to make him relevant, but by showing
viii
Editors Introduction
ix
Editor» Introduction
X
Editors Introduction
xi
Editor*i Introduction
ALLAN BLOOM
xiii
Translator a Nota
JA M E S H . NICHOLS, JR.
CONTENTS
1 In Place of an Introduction 3
2 Summary of the First Six Chapters of the
Phenomenology of Spirit 31
Complete Text of the First Three Lectures of the
Academic Year 1937-1938
3 Summary of the Course in 1937-1938 71
Excerpt from the 1938-1939 Annuaire of the École
Pratique des Hautes Études, Section des
Sciences religieuses
4 Philosophy and Wisdom 75
Complete Text of the First T w o Lectures of the
Academic Year 1938-1939
5 A N ote on Eternity, Time, and theConcept ioo
Complete Text of the Sixth through Eighth Lectures
of the Academic Year 1938-1939
6 Interpretation of the Third Part of Chapter VIII
of the Phenomenology of Spirit (conclusion) 150
Complete Text of the Twelfth Lecture of the
Academic Year 1938-1939
7 The Dialectic of the Real and the
Phenomenological Method in Hegel 169
Complete Text of the Sixth through Ninth Lectures
of the Academic Year 1939-1933
Appendix 261
The Structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit
IN TR O D U C TIO N
TO T H E R E A D I N G OF
HEGEL
1
IN PLACE OF AN INTRODUCTION*
3
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
4
ln Place of an Introduction
5
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
6
In Place of an Introduction
supreme value for an animal is its animal life. All the Desires of an
animal are in the final analysis a function of its desire to preserve
its life. Human Desire, therefore, must win out over this desire for
preservation. In other words, man’s humanity “comes to light”
only if he risks his (animal) life for the sake of his human Desire.
It is in and by this risk that the human reality is created and
revealed as reality; it is in and by this risk that it “comes to light,” r
i.e., is shown, demonstrated, verified, and gives proofs of being
essentially different from the animal, natural reality. And that is '
why to speak of the “origin” of Self-Consciousness is necessarily
to speak of the risk of life (for an essentially nonvital end).
[Man’s humanity “comes to light” only in risking his life to
satisfy his human Desire—that is, his Desire directed toward an
other Desire. N ow , to desire a Desire is to want to substitute
oneself for the value desired by this Desire. For without this sub
stitution, one would desire the value, the desired object, and not
the Desire itself. Therefore, to desire the Desire of another is in
the final analysis to desire that the value that I am or that I
“represent” be the value desired by the other: I want him to
“recognize” my value as his value. I want him to “recognize” me
as an autonomous value. In other words, all human, anthropogenetic
Desire—the Desire that generates Self-Consciousness, the human
reality—is, finally, a function of the desire for “recognition.” And
the risk of life by which the human reality “comes to light” is a
risk for the sake of such a Desire. Therefore, to speak of the
“origin” of Self-Consciousness is necessarily to speak of a fight to
the death for “recognition.”
[W ithout this fight to the death for pure prestige, there would
never have been human beings on earth. Indeed, the human being
is formed only in terms of a Desire directed toward another Desire,
that is—finally—in terms of a desire for recognition. Therefore,
the human being can be formed only if at least two of these Desires
confront one another. Each of the two beings endowed with such
a Desire is ready to go all the way in pursuit of its satisfaction;
that is, is ready to risk its life—and, consequently, to put the life
of the other in danger—in order to be “recognized” by the other,
to impose itself on the other as the supreme value; accordingly,
their meeting can only be a fight to the death. And it is only in
and by such a fight that the human reality is begotten, formed,
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
8
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ln Place of an Introduction
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Enjoyment. [Since all the effort is made by the Slave, the Master
has only to enjoy the thing that the Slave has prepared for him,
and tojm joy “negating” it, destroying it, by “consuming” it. (For
example, heeats food that is completely prepared) ]. W hat Desire
[i.e., isolated man “before” the Fight, who was alone with Nature
and whose desires were directed without detour toward that
Nature] did not achieve, the Master [whose desires are directed
toward things that have been transformed by the Slave] does
achieve. The Master can finish off the thing completely and satisfy
himself in Enjoyment. [Therefore, it is solely thanks to the work
of another (his Slave) that the Master is free with respect to
Nature, and consequently, satisfied with himself. But, he is Master
of the Slave only because he previously freed himself from Nature
(and from his own nature) by risking his life in a fight for pure
prestige, which—as such—is not at all “natural.” ] Desire cannot
achieve this because of the autonomy of the thing. The Master,
on the other hand, who introduced the Slave between the thing
and himself, is consequently joined only to the aspect of the thing’s
dependence, and has pure enjoyment from it. As for the aspect of
the thing’s autonomy, he leaves it to the Slave, who transforms the
thing by work.
In these two constituent-elements the Master gets his recognition
through another Consciousness; for in them the latter affirms itself
as unessential, both by the act of working on the thing and by the
fact of being dependent on a determinate existence. In neither case
can this [slavish] Consciousness become master of the given-being
and achieve absolute negation. Hence it is given in this constituent-
element of recognition that the other Consciousness overcomes
itself as Being-for-itself and thereby does itself what the other
Consciousness does to it. [That is to say, the Master is not the only
one to regard the Other as his Slave; this Other also considers him
self as such.] The other constituent-element of recognition is
equally implied in the relation under consideration; this other con
stituent-element is the fact that this activity of the second Con
sciousness [the slavish Consciousness] is the activity proper of the
first Consciousness [i.e., the Master’s]. For everything that the Slave
does is, properly speaking, an activity of the Master. [Since the
Slave works only for the Master, only to satisfy the Master’s
desire and not his own, it is the Master’s desire that acts in and
18
In Place of an Introduction
19
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
tion, the man who behaves as a Master will never be satisfied. And
since—in the beginning—man is either Master or Slave, the satis
fied man will necessarily be a Slave; or more exactly, the man who
has been a Slave, who has passed through Slavery, who has
“dialectically overcome” his slavery. Indeed: ]
Thus, the nonessential [or slavish] Consciousness is—for the
Mastér—the object that forms the truth [or revealed reality] of
the subjective-certainty he has of himself [since he can “know” he
is Master only by being recognized as such by the Slave]. But it
is obvious that this object does not correspond to its concept. For
in the Master’s fulfilling himself, something entirely different from
an autonomous Consciousness has come into being [since he is
faced with a Slave]. It is not such an autonomous Consciousness,
but all to the contrary, a dependent Consciousness, that exists for
him. Therefore, he is not subjectively certain of his Being-for-
itself as of a truth [or of a revealed objective reality]. His truth,
all to the contrary, is nonessential Consciousness, and the non-
essential activity of that Consciousness. [That is to say, the Mas
ter’s “truth” is the Slave and the Slave’s W ork. Actually, others
recognize the Master as Master only because he has a Slave; and
the Master’s life consists in consuming the products of slavish
W ork, and in living on and by this W ork.]
Consequently, the truth of autonomous Consciousness is slavish
Consciousness. This latter first appears, it is true, as existing outside
of itself and not as the truth of Self-Consciousness [since the Slave
recognizes human dignity not in himself, but in the Master, on
whom his very existence depends]. But, just as Mastery showed
that its essential-reality is the reverse or perversion of what it wants
to be, so much the more will Slavery, in its fulfillment, probably
become the opposite of what it is immediately; as repressed Con
sciousness it will go within itself and reverse and transform itself
into true autonomy.
[The complete, absolutely free man, definitively and completely
satisfied by what he is, the man who is perfected and completed
in and by this satisfaction, will be the Slave who has “overcome”
his Slavery. If idle Mastery is an impasse, laborious Slavery, in
contrast, is the source of all human, social, historical progress.
History is the history of the working Slave. To see this, one need
only consider the relationship between Master and Slave (that is,
2 0
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In Place of an Introduction
[The man who has not experienced the fear of death does not
know that the given natural W orld is hostile to him, that it tends
to kill him, to destroy him, and that it is essentially unsuited to
satisfy him really. This man, therefore, remains fundamentally
bound to the given W orld. A t the most, he will want to “reform”
it—that is, to change its details, to make particular transformations
without modifying its essential characteristics. This man will act
as a “skillful” reformer, or better, a conformer, but never as a true
revolutionary. Now, the given W orld in which he lives belongs
to the (human or divine) Master, and in this W orld he is neces
sarily Slave. Therefore, it is not reform, but the “dialectical,” or
better, revolutionary, overcoming of the W orld that can free him,
and—consequently—satisfy him. Now, this revolutionary trans
formation of the W orld presupposes the “negation,” the non
accepting of the given W orld in its totality. And the origin of
this absolute negation can only be the absolute dread inspired by
the given W orld, or more precisely, by that which, or by him
who, dominates this W orld, by the Master of this W orld. Now,
the Master who (involuntarily) engenders the desire of revolu
tionary negation is the Master of the Slave. Therefore, man can
free himself from the given W orld that does not satisfy him only
if this W orld, in its totality, belongs properly to a (real or “sub
limated” ) Master. Now, as long as the Master lives, he himself is
always enslaved by the W orld of which he is the Master. Since the
Master transcends the given W orld only in and by the risk of his
life, it is only his death that “realizes” his freedom. As long as
he lives, therefore, he never attains the freedom that would raise
him above the given W orld. The Master can never detach himself
from the W orld in which he lives, and if this W orld perishes, he
perishes with it. Only the Slave can transcend the given W orld
(which is subjugated by the Master) and not perish. Only the
Slave can transform the W orld that forms him and fixes him in
slavery and create a W orld that he has formed in which he will be
free. And the Slave achieves this only through forced and terrified
work carried out in the Master’s service. T o be sure, this work
by itself does not free him. But in transforming the W orld by this
work, the Slave transforms himself, too, and thus creates the new
objective conditions that permit him to take up once more the
liberating Fight for recognition that he refused in the beginning
*9
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
for fear of death. And thus in the long run, all slavish work realizes
not the Master’s will, but the will—at first unconscious—of the
Slave, who—finally—succeeds where the Master—necessarily—
fails. Therefore, it is indeed the originally dependent, serving, and
slavish Consciousness that in the end realizes and reveals the ideal
of autonomous Self-Consciousness and is thus its “truth.” ]
30
SUMMARY OF THE FIRST SIX CHAPTERS
OF THE PHENO M EN O LO G Y OF SPIRIT
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
3*
Summary of the First Six Chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
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Summary of the First Six Chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
he would have conceived only a part of the human reality, and his
system founded on this understanding of himself would necessarily
be insufficient and false, to the extent that it lays claim to totality,
as every system w orthy of the name must. But it must also be said
that Descartes—for reasons that Hegel explains—erred in answer
ing his initial question. And that is why his answer, “I am a thinking
being,” is not only too summary, but also false, because it is one
sided.
Starting with “I think,” Descartes fixed his attention only on the
“think,” completely neglecting the “I.” Now, this I is essential.
For Man, and consequently the Philosopher, is not only Conscious
ness, but also—and above all—Self-Consciousness. Man is not only
a being that thinks—i.e., reveals Being by Logos, by Speech formed
of words that have a meaning. He reveals in addition—also by
Speech—the being that reveals Being, the being that he himself is,
the revealing being that he opposes to the revealed being by giving
it the name Ich or Selbst, I or Self.
T o be sure, there is no human existence without Bewusstsein,
without Consciousness oi the external world. But for there truly
to be human existence, capable of becoming a philosophic existence,
there must also be Self-Consciousness. And for there to be Self-
Consciousness, Selbst-bewusstsein, there must be this Selbst, this
specifically human thing that is revealed by man and reveals itself
when man says, “I. . . .”
Before analyzing the ‘7 think,” before proceeding to the Kantian
theory of knowledge—i.e., of the relation between the (conscious)
subject and the (conceived) object, one must ask what this sub
ject is that is revealed in and by the I of “I think.” One must ask
when, why, and how man is led to say “I. . . .”
For there to be Self-Consciousness, there must—first of all—be
Consciousness. In other words, there must be revelation of Being
by Speech, if only by the one word Sein, Being—revelation of a
Being that will later be called “objective, external, wow-human
being,” “W orld,” “Nature,” and so on, but for the moment is still
neutral, since as yet there is no Self-Consciousness and consequently
no opposition of subject to object, of I to non-I, of the human to
the natural.
Hegel studies the most elementary form of Consciousness, of
knowledge of Being, and of its revelation by Speech, in Chapter I,
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Summary of the First Six Chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
38
Summary of the First Six Chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit
or without Desire that reveals and creates the I. T hat is why, in the
Phenomenology—i.e., in phenomenological anthropology—the ele
mentary possibility of revelation of given Being by Speech (implied
in the Chapter “Sensual Certainty” ) on the one hand, and on the
other, Action that destroys or negates given Being (Action that
arises from and because of Desire), are two irreducible givens,
which the Phenomenology presupposes as its premises. But these
premises are not sufficient.
The analysis that uncovers the constituent role of Desire enables
us to understand why human existence is possible only with an
animal existence as its basis: a stone or a plant (having no Desire)
never attains Self-Consciousness and consequently philosophy. But
animals do not attain it either. Animal Desire, therefore, is a neces
sary, but not a sufficient, condition of human and philosophical
existence. And here is why.
Animal Desire—hunger, for example—and the action that flows
from it, negate, destroy the natural given. By negating it, modify
ing it, making it its own, the animal raises itself above this given.
According to Hegel, the animal realizes and reveals its superiority
to plants by eating them. But by feeding on plants, the animal
depends on them and hence does not manage truly to go beyond
them. Generally speaking, the greedy emptiness—or the I—that
is revealed by biological Desire is filled—by the biological action
that flows from it—only with a natural, biological content. There
fore, the I, or the pseudo-I, realized by the active satisfaction of
this Desire, is just as natural, biological, material, as that toward
which the Desire and the Action are directed. The Animal raises
itself above the Nature that is negated in its animal Desire only
to fall back into it immediately by the satisfaction of this Desire.
Accordingly, the Animal attains only Selbst-gefühl, Sentiment of
self, but not Selbst-bevmsstsein, Self -Consciousness—that is, it
cannot speak of itself, it cannot say “I. . . .” And this is so because
the Animal does not really transcend itself as given—i.e., as body;
it does not rise above itself in order to come back toward itself;
it has no distance with respect to itself in order to contemplate
itself.
For Self-Consciousness to exist, for philosophy to exist, there
must be transcendence of self with respect to self as given. And
this is possible, according to Hegel, only if Desire is directed not
39
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
40
Summary of the First Six Chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit
Leben und T od). A Fight, since each will want to subjugate the
other, all the others, by a negating, destroying action. A life and
death Fight because Desire that is directed toward a Desire directed
toward a Desire goes beyond the biological given, so that Action
carried out for the sake of this Desire is not limited by this given.
In other words, Man will risk his biological life to satisfy his
nonbiological Desire. And Hegel says that the being that is incapa
ble of putting its life in danger in order to attain ends that are not
immediately vital—i.e. the being that cannot risk its life in a Fight
for Recognition, in a fight for pure prestige—is not a truly human
being.
Therefore, human, historical, self-conscious existence is possible
only where there are, or—at least—where there have been, bloody
fights, wars for prestige. And thus it was the sounds of one of these
Fights that Hegel heard while finishing his Phenomenology, in
which he became conscious of himself by answering his question
“W hat am I?”
But it is obvious that the three already-mentioned premises in
the Phenomenology are not sufficient to explain the possibility of
the Battle of Jena. Indeed, if all men were as I have just said, every
Fight for prestige would end in the death of at least one of the
adversaries. That is to say, finally, there would remain only one
man in the world, and—according to Hegel—he would no longer
be, he would not be, a human being, since the human reality is
nothing but the fact of the recognition of one man by another
man.
T o explain the fact of the Battle of Jena, the fact of the History
that that battle completes, one must therefore posit a fourth and
last irreducible premise in the Phenomenology. One must suppose
that the Fight ends in such a way that both adversaries remain
alive. Now, if this is to occur, one must suppose that one of the
adversaries gives in to the other and submits to him, recognizing
him without being recognized by him. One must suppose that the
Fight ends in the victory of the one who is ready to go all the way
over the one who—faced with death—does not manage to raise
himself above his biological instinct of preservation (identity). T o
use Hegel’s terminology, one must suppose that there is a victor
who becomes the Master of the vanquished; or, if one prefers, a
vanquished who becomes the Slave of the victor. The existence of
41
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
a difference between Master and Slave or, more exactly, the possi
bility of a difference between juture Master and juture Slave is the
fourth and last premise of the 'Phenomenology.
The vanquished has subordinated his human desire for Recogni
tion to the biological desire to preserve his lije: this is what deter
mines and reveals—to him and to the victor—his inferiority. The
victor has risked his lije for a nonvital end: and this is what deter
mines and reveals—to him and to the vanquished—his superiority
over biological life and, consequently, over the vanquished. Thus,
the difference between Master and Slave is realized in the existence
of the victor and of the vanquished, and it is recognized by both
of them.
The Master’s superiority over Nature, founded on the risk of his
life in the Fight for prestige, is realized by the fact of the Slave’s
W ork. This W ork is placed between the Master and Nature. The
Slave transforms the given conditions of existence so as to make
them conjorm to the Master’s demands. Nature, transformed by
the Slave’s W ork, serves the Master, without his needing to serve
it in turn. The enslaving side of the interaction with Nature falls
to the lot of the Slave: by enslaving the Slave and forcing him to
work, the Master enslaves Nature and thus realizes his freedom in
Nature. Thus the Master’s existence can remain exclusively war
like: he fights, but does not work. As for the Slave, his existence
is reduced to W ork {Arbeit) which he executes in the Master’s
Service {Dienst). He works, but does not fight. And according
to Hegel, only action carried out in another’s service is W ork
{Arbeit) in the proper sense of the word: an essentially human
and humanizing action. The being that acts to satisfy its own
instincts, which—as such—are always natural, does not rise above
Nature: it remains a natural being, an animal. But by acting to
satisfy an instinct that is not my own, I am acting in relation to
what is not—for me—instinct. I am acting in relation to an idea, a
wtfwbiological end. And it is this transformation of Nature in rela
tion to a wowmaterial idea that is W ork in the proper sense of the
word: W ork that creates a nonnatural, technical, humanized
W orld adapted to the human Desire of a being that has demon
strated and realized its superiority to Nature by risking its life for
the wtfwbiological end of Recognition. And it is only this W ork
42
Summary of the First Six Chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit
that could finally produce the table on which Hegel wrote his
Phenomenology and which was a part of the content of the I that
he analyzed in answering his question, “W hat am I?”
Generally speaking, b y accepting the four premises mentioned
above, namely: ( i ) the existence of the revelation of given Being
by Speech, (2) the existence of a Desire engendering an Action
that negates, transforms, given Being, (3) the existence of several
Desires, which can desire one another mutually, and (4) the exist
ence of a possibility of difference between the Desires of (future)
Masters and the Desires of (future) Slaves—by accepting these
four premises, we understand the possibility of a historical process,
of a History, which is, in its totality, the history of the Fights and
the W ork that finally ended in the wars of Napoleon and the table
on which Hegel wrote the Phenomenology in order to understand
both those wars and that table. Inversely, in order to explain the
possibility of the Phenomenology, which is written on a table and
which explains the wars of Napoleon, we must suppose the four
premises mentioned.1
In fine, then, we can say this: Man was born and History began
with the first Fight that ended in the appearance of a Master and
a Slave. T hat is to say that Man—at his origin—is always either
Master or Slave; and that true Man can exist only where there is
a Master and a Slave. (If they are to be human, they must be at
least two in number.) And universal history, the history of the
interaction between men and of their interaction with Nature, is
the history of the interaction between warlike Masters and work
ing Slaves. Consequently, H istory stops at the moment when the
difference, the opposition, between Master and Slave disappears:
at the moment when the Master will cease to be Master, because
xW e could try to deduce the first premise from the other three: Speech
(Logos) that reveals Being is bom in and from the Slave’s Self-Consciousness
(through W o rk ). As for the fourth premise, it postulates the act of freedom. For
nothing predisposes the future Master to Mastery, just as nothing predisposes the
future Slave to Slavery; each can (freely) create himself as Master or Slave.
W hat is given, therefore, is not the difference between Master and Slave, but the
free act that creates it. Now, the free act is by definition “undeducible.” Here,
then, we have what is indeed an absolute premise. All we can say is that without
the primordial free act that creates Mastery and Slavery, history and philosophy
could not exist. N ow , this act in turn presupposes a multiplicity of Desires that
desire one another mutually.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
he will no longer have a Slave; and the Slave will cease to be Slave,
because he will no longer have a Master (although the Slave will
not become Master in turn, since he will have no Slave).
Now, according to Hegel, it is in and by the wars of Napoleon,
and, in particular, the Battle of Jena, that this completion of His
tory is realized through the dialectical overcoming (Aufheben) of
both the Master and the Slave. Consequently, the presence of the
Battle of Jena in Hegel’s consciousness is of capital importance.
It is because Hegel hears the sounds of that battle that he can know
that History is being completed or has been completed, that—
consequently—his conception of the W orld is a total conception,
that his knowledge is an absolute knowledge.
However, to know this, to know that he is the thinker who can
realize the absolute Science, he must know that the Napoleonic
W ars realize the dialectical synthesis of the Master and the Slave.
A nd to know this, he must know: on the one hand, what the
essence (W esen) of the Master and the Slave is; and—on the other
—how and why History, which began with the “first” Fight for
prestige, ended in the wars of Napoleon.
The analysis of the essential character of the Master-Slave oppo
sition—that is, of the motive principle of the historical process—
is found in Chapter IV. And as for the analysis of the historical
process itself, it is given in Chapter VI.
History, that universal human process that conditioned the com
ing of Hegel, of the thinker endowed with an absolute Knowledge,
a process that that thinker must understand in and by a Phenome
nology before he can realize this absolute Knowledge in the “Sys
tem of Science”—universal history, therefore, is nothing but the
history of the dialectical—i.e., active—relation between Mastery
and Slavery. Hence, History will be completed at the moment
when the synthesis of the Master and the Slave is realized, that
synthesis that is the whole Man, the Citizen of the universal and
homogeneous State created by Napoleon.
This conception, according to which History is a dialectic or an
inter action of Mastery and Slavery, permits us to understand the
meaning of the division of the historical process into three great
periods (of very unequal lengths, incidentally). If History begins
with the Fight after which a Master dominates a Slave, the first
historical period must certainly be the one in which human exist-
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able to force the Slave to recognize him as Master, can also force
the Slave to work for him, to yield the result of his Action to him.
Thus, the Master no longer needs to make any effort to satisfy his
(natural) desires. The enslaving side of this satisfaction has passed
to the Slave: the Master, by dominating the working Slave, domi
nates Nature and lives in it as Master. Now, to preserve oneself in
Nature without fighting against it is to live in Genuss, in Enjoy
ment. And the enjoyment that one obtains without making any
effort is Lust, Pleasure. The life of the Masters, to the extent that
it is not bloody Fighting, Fighting for prestige with human beings,
is a life of pleasure.
A t first glance, it seems that the Master realizes the peak of
human existence, being the man who is fully satisfied (befriedigt),
in and by his real existence, by what he is. N ow in fact, this is not
at all the case.
W hat is this man, what does he want to be, if not a Master?
It was to become Master, to be Master that he risked his life, and
not to live a life of pleasure. Now, what he wanted by engaging
in the fight was to be recognized by another—that is, by someone
other than himself but who is like him, by another man. But in
fact, at the end of the Fight, he is recognized only by a Slave. T o
be a man, he wanted to be recognized by another man. But if to
be a man is to be Master, the Slave is not a man, and to be recog
nized by a Slave is not to be recognized by a man. H e would have
to be recognized by another Master. But this is impossible, since—
by definition—the Master prefers death to slavish recognition of
another’s superiority. In short, the Master never succeeds in realiz
ing his end, the end for which he risks his very life. The Master
can be satisfied only in and by death, his death or the death of his
adversary. But one cannot be befriedigt (fully satisfied) by what
is, by what one is, in and by death. For death is not, the dead man
is not. And what is, what lives, is only a Slave. Now, is it w orth
while to risk one’s life in order to know that one is recognized
by a Slave? Obviously not. And that is why, to the extent that the
Master is not made brutish by his pleasure and enjoyment, when
he takes account of what his true end and the motive of his actions
—i.e., his warlike actions—are, he will not, he will never be
befriedigt, satisfied by what is, by what he is.
In other words, Mastery is an existential impasse. T he Master
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that Man remains in contact with the concrete, which varies with
space and time. That is why he changes himself by transforming
the W orld.
The scheme of historical evolution, therefore, is as follows:
At the start, the future Master and the future Slave are both
determined by a given, natural W orld independent of them: hence
they are not yet truly human, historical beings. Then, by risking
his life, the Master raises himself above given Nature, above his
given (animal) “nature,” and becomes a human being, a being that
creates itself in and by its conscious negating Action. Then, he
forces the Slave to work. The latter changes the real given W orld.
Hence he too raises himself above Nature, above his (animal)
“nature,” since he succeeds in making it other than it was. T o be
sure, the Slave, like the Master, like Man in general, is determined
by the real W orld. But since this W orld has been changed, he
changes as well.4 And since it was he who changed the W orld,
it is he who changes himself, whereas the Master changes only
through the Slave. Therefore, the historical process, the historical
becoming of the human being, is the product of the working Slave
and not of the warlike Master. T o be sure, without the Master,
there would have been no History; but only because without him
there would have been no Slave and hence no W ork.
Therefore—once more—thanks to his W ork, the Slave can
change and become other than he is, that is, he can—finally—cease
to be a Slave. W ork is Bildung, in the double meaning of the
word: on the one hand, it forms, transforms the W orld, humanizes
it by making it more adapted to Man; on the other, it transforms,
forms, educates man, it humanizes him by bringing him into greater
conformity with the idea that he has of himself, an idea that—in
the beginning—is only an abstract idea, an ideal. If then, at the
start, in the given W orld the Slave had a fearful “nature” and had
to submit to the Master, to the strong man, it does not mean that
this will always be the case. Thanks to his work, he can become
other; and, thanks to his work, the W orld can become other. And
4 Animals also have (pseudo) techniques: the first spider changed the W orld
by weaving the first web. Hence it would be better to say: the W orld changes
essentially (and becomes human) through “exchange," which is possible only as
a result of W ork that realizes a “project.”
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work, but in ils prestige, in the wars for prestige that it wages in
order to make other States, all other States, recognize its autonomy
and its supremacy.
Now, according to Hegel, it follows from all this that the pagan
State of warlike and idle Masters can recognize, can make recog
nized or realize, only the universal element of human existence,
while the particular element remains on the fringe of the Society
and State proper.
This opposition of Particularity and Universality, of Einzelheit
and Allgemeinheit, is fundamental for Hegel. And if History,
according to him, can be interpreted as a dialectic of Mastery and
Slavery, it can also be understood as a dialectic of the Particular
and the Universal in human existence. Moreover, these two inter
pretations mutually complete one another, since Mastery corre
sponds to Universality and Slavery to Particularity.
Here is what this means:
Man from the start seeks Anerkennung, Recognition. He is not
content with attributing a value to himself. He wants this particular
value, his ovm, to be recognized by all men, universally.
In other words: Man can be truly “satisfied,” History can end,
only in and by the formation of a Society, of a State, in which the
strictly particular, personal, individual value of each is recognized
as such, in its very particularity, by all, by Universality incarnated
in the State as such; and in which the universal value of the State
is recognized and realized by the Particular as such, by all the
Particulars.· N ow such a State, such a synthesis of Particularity
and Universality, is possible only after the “overcoming” of the
opposition between the Master and the Slave, since the synthesis
of the Particular and the Universal is also a synthesis of Mastery
and Slavery.
As long as the Master is opposed to the Slave, as long as Mastery
and Slavery exist, the synthesis of the Particular and the Universal
cannot be realized, and human existence will never be “satisfied
This is true not only because the Slave is not universally recog-
6 The Particular who realizes a universal value, moreover, is no longer a
Particular: he is an Individual (= Citizen of the universal and homogeneous
State), a synthesis of the Particular and the Universal. Likewise, the Universal
(the State) realized by the Particular is individualized. It is the Individual-State
or the State-Individual, incarnated in the person of the universal Head of State
(Napoleon) and revealed by the Wise Man (Hegel).
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nized; and not only because the Master himself does not achieve
truly universal recognition, since he does not recognize a part of
those who recognize him—the Slaves. This synthesis is impossible
because the Master manages to realize and to make recognized
only the universal element in Man, while the Slave reduces his
existence to a purely particular value.
The Master constitutes his human value in and by the risk of
his life. Now, this risk is everywhere and always—and in all men—
the same. The Man who risks his life is in no way different, by
the sole act of having risked his life, from all the others who have
done as much. The human value constituted by the Fight is essen
tially universal, “impersonal.” And that is why the Masters’ State,
which recognizes a man only to the extent that this man risks his
life for the State in a war for prestige, recognizes only the purely
universal element in man, in the citizen: the citizen of this State
is just another citizen; as a citizen recognized by the State, he is
no different from the others; he is an anonymous warrior, he is
not Mr. So~andSo. And even the Head of State is just another
representative of the State, of the Universal, and not an Individual
properly so-called: in his activity he is a function of the State; the
State is not a function of his personal, particular will. In short,
the Head of the Greek City-State is not a “dictator” in the modern,
Christian, romantic sense of the word. He is not a Napoleon, who
creates a State through his personal will, with a view to realizing
and making recognized his Individuality. The pagan Head of State
accepts a given State, and his own value, his very reality, is but a
function of this State, of this universal element of existence. And
that is why the Master, the Pagan, is never “satisfied.” Only the
Individual can be “satisfied.”
As for the Slave’s existence, it is limited to the purely particular
element. The human value constituted by W ork is essentially
particular, “personal.” Bildung, the educative formation of the
W orker by W ork, depends on the concrete conditions in which
the work is carried out, conditions that vary in space and are
modified in time as a function of this very work. Therefore it is
by W ork, finally, that the differences between men are established,
that the “particularities,” the “personalities,” are formed. And thus
it is the working Slave, and not the warlike Master, who becomes
conscious of his “personality” and who imagines “individualistic”
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can—and one must—work for the State. But the Bourgeois can do
neither the one nor the other. He no longer has a Master whom
he could have served by working. And he does not yet have a State,
for the bourgeois W orld is but an agglomeration of private Prop
erty-owners, isolated from each other, without true community.
Hence the Bourgeois’ problem seems insoluble: he must work
for another and can work only for himself. Now in fact, Man
manages to resolve this problem, and he resolves it once more by
the bourgeois principle of private Property. The Bourgeois does
not work for another. But he does not work for himself, taken as
a biological entity, either. H e works for himself taken as a “legal
person,” as a private Property-owner: he works for Property taken
as such—i.e., Property that has now become money ; he works for
Capital.
In other words, the bourgeois W orker presupposes—and condi
tions—an Entsagung, an Abnegation of human existence. Man
transcends himself, surpasses himself, projects himself far away
from himself by projecting himself onto the idea of private Prop
erty, of Capital, which—while being the Property-owner’s own
product—becomes independent of him and enslaves him just as
the Master enslaved the Slave; with this difference, however, that
the enslavement is now conscious and freely accepted by the
W orker. (W e see, by the way, that for Hegel, as for Marx, the
central phenomenon of the bourgeois W orld is not the enslave
ment of the working man, of the poor bourgeois, by the rich
bourgeois, but the enslavement of both by Capital.) However that
may be, bourgeois existence presupposes, engenders, and nourishes
Abnegation. Now it is precisely this Abnegation that reflects itself
in the dualistic Christian ideology, while providing it with a new,
specific, nonpagan content. It is the same Christian dualism that
is found again in bourgeois existence: the opposition between the
“legal Person,” the private Property-owner, and the man of flesh
and blood; the existence of an ideal, transcendent W orld, repre
sented in reality by Money, Capital, to which Man is supposed to
devote his Actions, to sacrifice his sensual, biological Desires.
And as for the structure of the Christian Beyond, it is formed
in the image of the relations realized in the Roman Empire between
the Emperor and his subjects, relations which—as we have seen—
have the same origin as the Christian ideology: the refusal of
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death, the desire for animal life, for Sein, which in Christianity is
sublimated in a desire for immortality, for “eternal life.” And if
the pagan Master accepts the Christian ideology of his Slave, an
ideology that makes him a Servant of the absolute Master, of the
King of heaven, of God, it is because—having ceased to risk his
life and becoming a peaceful Bourgeois—he sees that he is no
longer a Citizen who can satisfy himself through a political activity.
He sees that he is the passive subject of a despotic Emperor. Just
like the Slave, therefore, he has nothing to lose and everything
to gain by imagining a transcendent W orld, in which all men are
equal before an omnipotent, truly universal Master, who recog
nizes, moreover, the absolute value of each Particular as such.
Here, then, is how and why the pagan W orld of Masters
became a Christian bourgeois W orld:
In opposition to Paganism, to the religion of the Masters, of the
warlike Citizens who attribute true value only to Universality, to
what is valuable for all men and at all times, Christianity, the
religion of the Slaves, or—more exactly—of the Bourgeois-Sub
jects, attributes an absolute value to Particularity, to the here and
now. This change of attitude is clearly manifested in the m yth of
the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, as well as in the idea that
God has a direct, immediate relation with each man taken sepa
rately, without passing through the universal—i.e., social and
political—element of Man’s existence.
Hence Christianity is first of all a particularistic, family, and
slavish reaction against the pagan universalism of the Citizen-Mas
ters. But it is more than that. It also implies the idea of a synthesis
of the Particular and the Universal—that is, of Mastery and Slavery
too: the idea of Individuality—i.e., of that realization of universal
values and realities in and by the Particular and of that universal
recognition of the value of the Particular, which alone can give
Man Befriedigung, the supreme and definitive “Satisfaction.”
In other words, Christianity finds the solution to the pagan
tragedy. And that is why, since the coming of Christ, there is no
longer any true tragedy—that is, inevitable conflict with truly no
way out.
The whole problem, now, is to realize the Christian idea of
Individuality. And the history of the Christian W orld is nothing
but the history of this realization.
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Christian doctrine which differs from his own doctrine only in its
form: Christian theology in reality reveals to us nothing other
than the Hegelian concept of Individuality, but in the form of the
representation ( Vorstellung) of god-manhood.
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O r else, what amounts to the same thing: that man is Wise who is
fully and perfectly self-conscious.
Now, an awareness of the meaning of this definition is sufficient
to make us understand why Plato, for example, denied the possi
bility of realizing this ideal of Wisdom.
It is the case that one can ask any question at all about any of
our acts—that of washing, for example, or of paying taxes—with
the result that, after several answers that call forth each time a new
“why,” one comes to the problems of the relationship between
the soul and the body, between the individual and the State; to
questions relating to the finite and the infinite, to death and im
mortality, to God and the W orld; and finally to the problem of
knowledge itself, of this coherent and meaningful language that
permits us to ask questions and to answer them. In short, by pro
ceeding, so to speak, in the vertical plane, one will quickly come
face to face with the entire body of the so-called philosophical or
“metaphysical” questions.
On the other hand, by setting forth from the same banal act
and proceeding in the “horizontal” plane, one will end up—less
quickly, of course—surveying all the Sciences taught in modem
Universities. And perhaps one will discover still others, not yet in
existence.
In a word, to be able to answer all questions relating to any one
of our acts is, in the final analysis, to be able to answer all possible
questions in general. Therefore: “to answer all questions . . . and
so on” is to realize the encyclopaedia of possible kinds of knowl
edge. T o be perfectly and completely self-conscious is to have at
one’s disposal—at least virtually—an encyclopaedic knowledge in
the full sense of the word.
In defining the Wise Man, the Man of absolute Knowledge, as
perfectly self-conscious—i.e., omniscient, at least potentially—
Hegel nevertheless had the unheard-of audacity to assert that he
realized Wisdom in his own person.
W hen the Wise Man is discussed, he is usually presented in an
other guise, which seems more easily attainable than omniscience.
Thus the Stoics, for example, for whom the idea of the W ise Man
plays a central role and who, in contrast to Plato, asserted the
possibility and even the reality of such a man, define him as that
man who is perfectly satisfied by what he is. The Wise Man, then,
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And the same remark can be made concerning my “easy” argument. It is, without
doubt, “obvious.” But it is convincing only for those who are ready to trust in
the obvious. Now, as I said, we ourselves are sufficiently “romantic” to know that
a distinction can be made between (theoretical) evidence and (existential) con
viction, Generally speaking, all that I have said is truly convincing only for those
who put the supreme existential value in Self-Consciousness, Now, in truth, these
people are convinced beforehand. If, for them, Self-Consciousness is the supreme
value, it is obvious that they can be fully satisfied only by a self -conscious satis
faction. Inversely, should they attain full self-consciousness, they will thereby be
perfectly satisfied, even if they do not live in positive pleasure, and even if—
from time to time—they are unhappy. For them, satisfaction and self-conscious
ness are but two aspects of one and the same thing. But for the common mortal,
this identification is not at all automatic. On the contrary, they tend to separate
the two things, and in preferring satisfaction, they believe it to be much more
attainable than fullness of self-consciousness—that is, omniscience. I shall return
to this question later. For the moment, I must go on.
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all those for whom he exists—i.e., for those who understand him,
who know that he exists, and who know what he is. For the mo
ment let us set aside this restriction. The W ise Man, then, is uni
versally recognized. This is to say that there is only one possible
type of Wisdom. In making this assertion, we run into the con
trary thesis of pluralism or existential relativism. How does Hegel
manage to prove his thesis? In point of fact, he can prove it only
by starting from the first definition of Wisdom, put as an axiom.
As for the proof, it is very simple. Let us admit that the Wise
Man is perfectly self-conscious. W e have seen that perfect self-
consciousness equals omniscience. In other words, the Wise Man’s
knowledge is total, the W ise Man reveals the totality of Being
through the entirety of his thought. Now, since Being obeys the
principle of identity to itself, there is only one unique totality of
Being, and consequently only one unique knowledge that reveals
it entirely. Therefore there is only one unique possible type of
(conscious) Wisdom.
Now, if the ideal of self-conscious Wisdom is unique, we must
say that the Wise Man who realizes it also realizes moral per
fection, and consequently that he is satisfied by what he is.
Therefore it is sufficient to suppose that the Wise Man is fully
self-conscious in order to be able to assert that self-consciousness,
subjective satisfaction, and objective perfection completely coin
cide in Wisdom (which is necessarily unique). In other words, to
arrive at this three-fold Hegelian definition it is sufficient to sup
pose that man is Self-Consciousness in his very “essence” and
being, that it is through Self-Consciousness and only through Self-
Consciousness that he differs from animals and things. Starting
from this supposition, one can actually deduce the threefold defini
tion that we were talking about.
Once more, I am not concerned with reproducing this deduction
here, which is given in the entirety of the first seven chapters of
the Phenomenology. But I shall say that it is irrefutable.
Therefore: a reading of the first seven chapters of the Phe
nomenology shows that the definition of man by Self-Conscious
ness is sufficient grounds for the necessary conclusion that there
must be an ideal of the Wise Man, that there can be only one type
of Wise Man, and that the Wise Man answers to the threefold
Hegelian definition. At least, this is what Hegel himself would
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threefold ideal of the Wise Man; on the other hand, he asserts that
this ideal is realized, namely, by himself, that is, by the author of
the deduction in question. Now, it is obvious that the deductions
of the Phenomenology can only prove the ideal possibility, so to
speak, of the W ise Man. But the Phenomenology cannot prove the
real possibility of the W ise Man; and still less his very reality. In
fact Plato, who starts with the same supposition as Hegel (Man =
Self-Consciousness), recognizes, to be sure, that the Wise Man
whom we have in view is the necessary ideal of thought, or better,
of discourse; but he denies that this ideal can be realized by man.
(This means: by real man, living in a real W orld, during the
length of time limited by his birth and his death).
Now, since we have here a question of reality—that is, of fact—
Hegel can refute Platonic skepticism only by pointing to a fact.
I shall return to the question of the reality of the Wise Man.
For the moment, I want to talk only about “theoretical” difficul
ties, so to speak, by developing the remarks that I already made
above and promised to come back to.
W e have seen that one can ask not only the question of fact, but
also the question of right: one can cast doubt on Plato-Hegel’s
starting point, that is, on the identification of man and Self-Con
sciousness and on the assertion that Self-Consciousness always
tends to extend itself as much as possible. T o be sure, the deduction
of the Phenomenology is not hypothetical. For, without a doubt,
Self-Consciousness is not an arbitrary “axiom” that can be denied,
but an undebatable fact. However, it can be interpreted differ
ently. One can deny that Self-Consciousness reveals man’s
“essence.” O r else, in simpler language, one can say: either that
Self-Consciousness is a sort of sickness that man must, and can,
surmount; or that, alongside of conscious men, there are uncon
scious men, who are nevertheless just as human—although in a
different way. Now, by doing this, one denies the universality of
Wisdom. W hich means: one challenges the identity of the three
definitions of the Wise Man.
N ow the denial of the Hegelian identification of satisfaction-
perfection with Self-Consciousness was by no means invented by
me. It has actually been made. One need only call to mind the
Hindu thinkers, who say that man approaches satisfaction-perfec
tion in dreamless sleep, that satisfaction-perfection is realized in
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agrees with Hegel, who marks its end. About the Wise Man, the
only possible fundamental divergence is that which exists between
Hegel and Plato—i.e., while accepting the ideal of the Wise Man
and the Platonic-Hegelian definition of him, one can either assert
or deny the possibility of realizing Wisdom, of actually becoming
a Wise Man after being a Philosopher.
Let us now see what this divergence means. Certainly one can,
like Plato, deny the possibility of realizing Wisdom. But then, one
of two things: either the ideal of the W ise Man is never realized
anywhere; and then the Philosopher is simply a madman, who
claims or wants to be what one can not be and (what is worse)
what he knows to be impossible. Or else he is not a madman; and
then his ideal of Wisdom is or will be realized, and his definition
of the Wise Man is or will be a truth. But since it cannot, by
definition, be realized by man in time, it is or will be realized by a
being other than man, outside of time. W e all know that such a
being is called God. Therefore, if with Plato one denies the possi
bility of the human Wise Man, one must either deny Philosophy,
or assert the existence of God.
Let us make this assertion and see what it means. On the one
hand, truth reveals what is. On the other hand, it remains eternally
identical to itself. Therefore, it reveals a being that remains in
identity to itself. N ow by definition, the man who eternally
remains a Philosopher always changes. (And since the W orld
implies changing man, this W orld in its entirety also changes).
Human discourse contains truth, then, only to the extent that it
reveals being other than man (and the W orld) ; it is true only to
the extent that it reveals God, who is the only being that is per
fect, satisfied, and conscious of itself and of its perfect satisfaction.
Hence all philosophical progress is, in fact, not an anthropo-
logical, but a theo-logical progress. Wisdom for man means, not
perfect coming to consciousness of self, but perfect knowledge of
God.
The opposition between Plato and Hegel, then, is not an oppo
sition within Philosophy. It is an opposition between Philosophy
and Theology—that is, in the final analysis, between Wisdom and
Religion. From the subjective point of view this opposition can
be presented in the following manner: the Philosopher hopes to
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In the final analysis, and speaking very generally, there are three,
and only three, possible types of existential attitudes:
First, one can deny the Platonic-Hegelian ideal of the W ise Man.
In other words, one can deny that the supreme value is contained
in Self-Consciousness. By deciding for this attitude, one decides
against every kind of Philosophy. But there is more. It must be
said that, all things considered, this decision takes away the mean
ing of all human discourse whatsoever. In its radical form, this
attitude ends in absolute silence.
Therefore: First, by rejecting the ideal of Wisdom, one decides
against all meaningful discourse in favor of an absolute silence or
a “language” deprived of every kind of meaning (mathematical,
musical “languages,” and so on). Second, in accepting this ideal
but denying that man can realize it, one opts for a discourse which
is, to be sure, meaningful but which relates to a reality that is
essentially other than mine: one opts against Philosophy for
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
Theology. Finally, third, one can opt for Philosophy. But then
one is forced to accept the possibility of some day realizing the
ideal of Wisdom.
W ith full knowledge of the problem, Hegel opts for this third
attitude. And he does not merely opt for it. In the Phenomenology
he tries to prove that it is the only one possible.
Actually, he does not succeed in doing so. He cannot refute
those who aspire to an existential ideal that excludes Self-Con
sciousness, or at the very least the indefinite extension of Self-
Consciousness. And as for Theology, he only succeeds in showing
that the Religious man’s existence is necessarily an existence in
unhappiness. But since he himself says that the Religious man is
satisfied by his unhappiness, he cannot refute him either, unless he
appeals once more to the extension of ^//-consciousness. Now,
this extension no longer interests the Religious man, once he
believes he has attained perfect understanding of G od.
In short, the Phenomenology only shows that the ideal of the
Wise Man, as it is defined therein, is the necessary ideal of Philoso
phy, and of every philosophy—that is, of every man who puts the
supreme value on Self -Consciousness, which is precisely a con
sciousness of self and not of something else.
This restriction is by no means an objection to the Phenome
nology. Indeed, Hegel writes the Phenomenology to answer the
question, “W hat am I?” Now, the man who asks this question—
that is, the man who, before continuing to live and act, wants to
become conscious of himself—is by definition a Philosopher. To
answer the question, “W hat am I?” therefore, is necessarily to talk
about the Philosopher. In other words, the man with whom the
in a book entitled E thics , which treats of hum an Wisdom. Finally Kant, in dis
covering the transcendental, believes he can do without the transcendent; or
else, what is the same thing: he believes he can avoid the alternative of asserting
or denying Wisdom by supposing an infinite or indefin ite philosophical progress.
But we know that this was but an illusion: to be sure, he does not need God in
each of the two parts of his 'System,1* but he cannot do without G od if he wants
to make a sy ste m out of these tw o parts,—i.e.t to unite them; actually, he abandons
the “System** and merely attaches the two “critiques ” together by means of a
third “C ritiq u e”; and he knows full well that this union has the value, not of a
truth, but of a simple “as if’*; in order to make this System become theological ,
it suffices to transform the third “C ritiqu e” into a third part of the “S ystem .”
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94
Philosophy and Wisdom
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96
Philosophy an d W isdom
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98
Philosophy and Wisdom
99
5
SIXTH LECTURE
100
Λ "Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
I. C = E . ( a. outside of T
II. C = E 'l and relates to ! lm^ I b. in T
III. C = T I2‘ 1
[IV. C = Τ ']
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
102
A N o te on E ternity, T im e, and th e C on cept
IO 3
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
104
A N o te on E tern ity , T im e , and th e C on cept
Figure 1 "Theology"
(Plato)
o
Figure 7
* — — -
figure 2
"Pessimistic Skepticism"
υ
or "Relativism"
♦ Figure 8
Figure 3
J Silence L
Mysticism99
Figure 9
Figure 4
"Optimistic Skepticism"
or "Criticism"
u (Kant)
Figure 10
Figure5
Figure 6 Figure 11
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
106
Λ N o te on E tern ity , T im e , an d th e C on cept
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
X08
A Note on Eternity, Time, end f/ie Concept
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
6 But the Christian admits that God's decision is in conformity with human
reason.
HO
A N o te on Eternity, Tim e, and th e C oncept
human freedom (that is to say, the idea of Man himself, since man
without freedom is but an animal).
W e do not need to define freedom here.·
W e all have “an idea of what it is,” as we say; even if we do not
know how to define freedom. And the “idea” that we have of it is
sufficient to enable us to say this:
The free act is situated, so to speak, outside of the line of tem
poral evolution. The hic et nunc, represented by a point on this
line, is determined, fixed, defined by the past which, through it,
determines the future as well. The hic et nunc of the free act, on
the other hand, is unexplainable, on the basis of its past; it is not
fixed or determined by it. Even while existing in space-time, the
being endowed with freedom must be able to detach itself from
the hic et nunc, to rise above it, to take up a position in relation to
it. But the free act is related to the hic et nunc: it is effected in
given determined conditions. That is to say: the content of the
hic et nunc must be preserved, while being detached from the hie
et nunc. Now, that which preserves the content of a perception
while detaching it from the hic et nunc of sensation is precisely
the Concept or the W ord that has a meaning. (This table is bound
to the hic et nunc; but the meaning of the words “this table”
exists everywhere and always). And that is why everyone agrees
that only a speaking being can be free.7
As for Plato, who believes that virtue can be taught, and taught
through dialectic—i.e., through Discourse—obviously the free act,
for him, has the same nature as the act of conceptual understand
ing: for him, they are but tw o complementary aspects of one and
the same thing.
Now, for Plato the Concept is ( i) eternal, and (2) it is related
to Eternity, which (3) is outside of Time. The application of this
definition of the Concept to the free act leads to the following
results:
Just as the Concept is not related to the temporal reality in which
doxa reigns, so the free act, too, is impossible in this reality. In and
6 In point of fact, either this word has no meaning, or else it is the Negativity
of which Hegel speaks, and which a Descartes and a Kant had in view without
speaking of it explicitly. But no matter.
7Hegel, it is true, reverses this assertion and says that only a free being can
speak-, but he too maintains the close connection between language and freedom.Il
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NTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
112
A N o te on E ternity , Tim e , and th e C oncept
SEVENTH LECTURE
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9 As in Hegel.
10 Whereas in Hegel the circuit is made only once.
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Λ N ote on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
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Λ N ote on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
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Il8
Λ Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
"Absolute Knowledge"
O
(Spinoza and Hegel)
"Theology"
(Plato)
Figure 12
"Atheism"
(Hegel)
Figure 13
'Theology"
(Plato)
"Acosmism"
(Spinoza)
Figure 17
"Skepticism
O
and Criticism"
(Kant)
hypothetical Theology"
(Kant)
FigurelS
Figura15
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120
Λ N ote on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
only the second expresses Hegel’s thought. And that is what Hegel
means by saying that Spinoza’s System is not a pan-theism, but an
a-cosmism: it is the Universe or the totality of Being reduced to
God alone, but to a God without W orld and without men. And
to say this is to say that everything that is change, becoming, time,
does not exist for Science. For if the Ethics is, in fact, concerned
with these things, how or why they appear in it is not known.
W ith the use of our symbolic circles, then, the difference
between Hegel’s and Spinoza’s Systems can be represented in the
following manner:
Let us start with the theistic System. In its pure form, it is
Plato’s System. But in general it symbolizes possibility II (see
Figure 13). For Aristotle, several small circles must be inscribed
in the large circle to symbolize the relation of Eternity and Time
(Figure 14); but these circles ought to have fitted together; in
the end, there would again be the Platonic symbol with only one
small circle. (That is to say: all truly coherent theism is a mono
theism.) As for Kant, the same symbol can serve; but the small
circle must be drawn with a dotted line, to show that Kant’s
theology has, for him, only the value of an “as if” (Figure 15). In
short, the symbol of the theistic System is valid for every System
that defines the Concept as an eternal entity in relation to some
thing other than itself, no matter whether this other thing is
Eternity in Time or outside of Time, or Time itself. But let us
return to Spinoza. Starting with the theistic system, Hegel does
away with the small circle (reduced beforehand, by his prede
cessors, to a single point): see Figure 16. Spinoza, on the other
hand, does away with the large circle: see Figure 17.
Hence the symbol is the same in both cases: a homogeneous
closed circle. And this is important. For we see that it is sufficient
to deny that the Concept is a relation with something other than
itself in order to set up the ideal of absolute—that is, circular—
Knowledge. And indeed, if the Concept is related to another
reality, an isolated concept can be established as true by adequa
tion to this autonomous reality. In this case there are partial facts,
or even partial truths. But if the Concept is revealed Being itself,
it can be established as true only through itself. The proof itself no
longer differs from that which has to be proved. And this means
that the truth is a “System,” as Hegel says. The word “system”
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
is not found in Spinoza. But the thing itself is there. Setting aside
Parmenides, Spinoza is the only philosopher who understood that
the principle of all or nothing is valid for Knowledge: either one
knows everything, or else one knows nothing; for one sees that
one truly knows something only by seeing that one knows every
thing, And that is why the study of Spinoza is so instructive,
despite the absurdity of his point of view. Spinoza sets up the ideal
of total, or “systematic,” or “circular,” Knowledge. However, his
System is impossible in Time. And Hegel’s whole effort consists
in creating a Spinozist System which can be written by a man
living in a historical W orld. And that is why, while admitting
with Spinoza that the Concept is not a relation, Hegel identifies
it not with Eternity, but with Time. (O n this subject see the
Preface to the Phenomenology, pp. içff.)
W e shall see later what this means. For the moment, I want to
underline once more that the symbols of both systems are identical.
T hey differ only in their source (which is not seen in the draw
ing): doing away with the small or the large circle. And again,
this indeed corresponds to the reality. It is understandable that a
temporal Knowledge could finally embrace the totality of becom
ing. But it is not understandable that an eternal Knowledge could
absorb everything that is in Time: for the simple reason that it
would absorb us ourselves. It would be the absolute Knowledge
of Bewusstsein, which would have completely absorbed Selbst
bewusstsein. And this, obviously, is absurd.
I shall stop here. T o know what the identification of the Concept
with Eternity means, one must read the whole Ethics.
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Λ Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
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124
Λ Note on Eternity , Time, and the Concept
it. But he was wrong to forget that God alone can apply this
Concept to himself. For us who are not God, to apply our Concept
to God is to relate the Concept to something other than this Con
cept itself. Now, the Concept which is a relation in the proper
sense of the word—that is, a relation to something else—is, at
most, eternal, but not Eternity. This is to say: either the very basis
of Spinozism is false (the Concept is not Eternity) ; or else, if the
Concept is Eternity, only God can be a Spinozist. T o assert that
one is not God and to write the Ethics is not to know what one
is doing; it is to do something of which one cannot give an
account, to do something “absurd.”
But in principle, according to Kant, God could write the Ethics.
The whole question, then, is to know whether a man (Spinoza)
can be God. Now, for Kant, this is impossible, because Man can
draw nothing from the content of his Self-Consciousness: taken
in itself, the human I is a point without content, an empty re
ceptacle, and the (manifold) content must be given {gegeben)
to it, it must come from elsewhere. Or, what amounts to the same
thing: it is not sufficient for Man to think in order that there be
true knowledge; in addition, the object of which Man thinks must
exist, and exist independently of his act of thinking of it. O r else,
again, as Kant says: human Consciousness necessarily has tw o
constituent elements: the Begriff or Concept, and the Anschauung
or Intuition, the latter presenting a (manifold) content given to
Man and not produced by him, or from him, or in him.
The Concept possessed by a being that is not God is, therefore,
a relation: in other words, it can be eternal, but it is not Eternity.
And that is why Spinozism is “absurd.” It is absurd because
Spinoza is not God.
But there is still the conception of Plato-Aristotle, which admits
that the (human) Concept is a relation,, but a relation related to
Eternity and not to Time. That is to say: Eternity (or God)
implies the manifold in its own unity, and it itself creates the
manifold which it reveals by the Concept. Therefore, being the
eternal development of Eternity in itself, this manifold itself is
Eternity: it is the (manifold) Universe of ideas-concepts, which
has nothing to do with the W orld of space-time. But it is Eternity
itself that develops itself in this Universe; our merely eternal Con
cept does not produce it. Hence this Universe is given to us; and
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126
A N ote on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
to say that they are one and the same thing which has changed; and Time is but
the infinite whole of all identifications of the diverse—that is, of all changes
whatsoever.
15 It is not sufficient to geometrize physics, as Plato and Descartes do; it would
still be necessary to geometrize the thought of the philosopher who performs this
geometrization—that is, to exclude Time from this thought itself; now, this is
impossible. The ideal of the “universal tensor” in modem relativist physics is the
ideal of a nontemporal knowledge: the whole content would be given stTnul-
taneously in this formula; but even if this tensor is possible, it is only an algorithm,
and not a Discourse; all discursive thought is necessarily developed in Time, be
cause even the attributing of the predicate to the subject is a temporal act.
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A N ote on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
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EIGHTH LECTURE
130
A Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
Hegel is the first to identify the Concept and Time. And, curi
ously enough, he himself says it in so many words, whereas one
would search in vain in the other philosophers for the explicit
formulas that I have used in my schematic exposition. Hegel said
it as early as the Preface to the Phenomenology, where the para
doxical sentence that I have already cited is found: “Was die Zeit
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
betrifft, . . . so ist sie der daseiende Begriff selbst” (As for Time,
it is the empirically existing Concept itself). And he repeats it
word for word in Chapter VIII.
This sentence marks an extremely important date in the history
of philosophy. Disregarding Parmenides-Spinoza, we can say that
there are two great periods in this history: one that goes from
Plato to Kant, and one that begins with Hegel. And I have already
said (although, of course, I was not able to prove it) that the
philosophers who do not identify the Concept and Time cannot
give an account of History—that is, of the existence of the man
whom each of us believes himself to be—that is, the free and
historical individual.
The principal aim, then, of the reform introduced by Hegel was
the desire to give an account of the fact of History. On its phe
nomenological level, Hegel's philosophy (or more exactly, his
“Science”) describes the existence of Man who sees that he lives
in a W orld in which he knows that he is a free and historical
individual. And on its metaphysical level, this philosophy tells us
what the W orld in which Man can appear thus to himself must be.
Finally, on the ontological level, the problem is to see what Being
itself must be in order to exist as such a W orld. And Hegel answers
by saying that this is possibly only if the real Concept (that is,
Being revealed to itself by an empirically existing Discourse) is
Time.
Hegel’s whole philosophy or “Science,” therefore, can be
summed up in the sentence cited: uTime is the Concept itself which
is there in empirical existence”—that is, in real Space or the W orld.
But of course, it is not sufficient to have read that sentence in
order to know what Hegelian philosophy is; just as it is not suffi-
cient to say that the eternal Concept is related to Tim e in order to
know what K ant’s philosophy is, for example. It is necessary to
develop these condensed formulas. And to develop the formula
entirely is to reconstruct the entirety of the philosophy in question
(with the supposition that its author has made no error in his own
development of the fundamental formula).
O f course, we cannot try to reconstruct here the entirety of
Hegelian philosophy from the identification of the empirically
existing Concept and Time. I must be satisfied with making several
quite general remarks, like those that I made in discussing the
13^
A N ote on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
The text in question clearly shows that the Time that Hegel has
in view is the Time that, for us, is historical (and not biological
or cosmic) Time. In effect, this Time is characterized by the
primacy of the Future. In the Time that pre-Hegelian Philosophy
considered, the movement went from the Past toward the Future,
by way of the Present.*1 In the Time of which Hegel speaks, on the
other hand, the movement is engendered in the Future and goes
toward the Present by way of the Past: Future Past -* Present
Future). And this is indeed the specific structure of properly
human—that is, historical—Time.
In fact, let us consider the phenomenological (or better, anthro
pological) projection of this metaphysical analysis of Time.** The
movement engendered by the Future is the movement that arises
from Desire. This means: from specifically human Desire—that is,
creative Desire—that is, Desire that is directed toward an entity
that does not exist and has not existed in the real natural W orld.
Only then can the movement be said to be engendered by the
Future, for the Future is precisely what does not (yet) exist and
has not (already) existed. N ow , we know that Desire can be
directed toward an absolutely nonexistent entity only provided
that it is directed toward another Desire taken as Desire. As a
m atter of fact, Desire is the presence of an absence·. I am thirsty
because there is an absence of water in me. It is indeed, then, the
presence of a future in the present: of the future act of drinking.
21 It may be th at the Time in which the Present takes primacy is cosmic or
physical Time, whereas biological Time would be characterized by the primacy
of the Past. It does seem that the physical or cosmic object is but a simple
presence (Gegenwart) , whereas the fundamental biological phenomenon is prob
ably Memory in the broad sense, and the specifically human phenomenon is
without a doubt the Project. Moreover, it could be th at the cosmic and biological
forms of Time exist as Time only in relation to Man—that is, in relation to
historical Time.
22 On the ontological level, the problem would be to study the relations
between Thesis = Identity, Antithesis = Negativity, and Synthesis = Totality.
But I shall not talk about this.
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24 Indeed, we say that a moment is “historical” when the action that is per
formed in it is performed in terms of the idea that the agent has of the future
(that is, in terms of a Project) : one decides on a juture war, and so on; there
fore, one acts in terms of the future. But if the moment is to be truly “historical,”
there must be change; in other words, the decision must be negative with respect
to the given: in deciding fo r the future war, one decides against the prevailing
peace. And, through the decision for the future war, the peace is transformed into
the past. Now, the present historical act, launched by the idea of the future (by
the Project), is determined by this past that it creates: if the peace is sure and
honorable, the negation that relegates it to the past is the act of a madman or a
criminal; if it is humiliating, its negation is an act worthy of a statesman; and so on.
25 As an example of a “historic moment” let us take the celebrated anecdote
of the “Rubicon.” W hat is there in the present properly so-called? A man takes
a walk at night on the bank of a small river. In other words, something extremely
banal, nothing “historic.” For even if the man in question was Caesar, the event
would in no sense be “historic” if Caesar were taking such a walk solely because
of some sort of insomnia. The moment is historic because the man taking a noc
turnal walk is thinking about a coup d'état, the civil war, the conquest of Rome,
and worldwide dominion. And, let us take care to notice: because he has the
project of doing it, for all this is still in the future. The event in question, there
fore, would not be historic if there were not a real presence (Gegenwart) of the
future in the real W orld (first of all, in Caesar's brain). Therefore, the present
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Λ Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
also be something other than Time. This other thing is first of all
Space (as it were, the place where things are stopped). Therefore:
no Time without Space; Time is something that is in Space.26 Time
is the negation of Space (of diversity) ; but if it is something and
not nothingness, it is because it is the negation of Space. Now,
only that which really exists—that is, which resists—can be really
negated. But Space that resists is full: it is extended matter, it is
real Space—that is, the natural W orld. Therefore, Time must exist
in a World: it is indeed, then, something which “ist d a ” as Hegel
says, which is there in a Space, and which is there in empirical
Space—that is, in a sensible Space or a natural W orld. Time
annihilates this W orld by causing it at every instant to sink into
the nothingness of the past. But Time is nothing but this nihilation
of the W orld; and if there were no real W orld that was anni
hilated, Time would only be pure nothingness: there would be no
Time. Hence Time that is, therefore, is indeed something that
“exists empirically”—i.e., exists in a real Space or a spatial W orld.
Now, we have seen that the presence of Time (in which the
Future takes primacy) in the real W orld is called Desire (which
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138
A Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
other Desire—that is, toward something that does not exist really
in the natural W orld.29 Only Man creates and destroys essentially.
Therefore, the natural reality implies Time only if it implies a
human reality. Now , man essentially creates and destroys in terms
of the idea that he forms of the Future. And the idea of the Future
appears in the real present in the form of a Desire directed toward
another Desire—that is, in the form of a Desire for social Recog-
nition. Now, Action that arises from this Desire engenders History.
Hence there is Tim e only where there is History.
Therefore: “die Zeit ist der daseiende Begriff selbst” means:
Tim e is Man in the W orld and his real History. But Hegel also
says: “Geist ist Z e it” T hat is to say, Man is Time. And we have
just seen what this means: Man is Desire directed toward another
Desire—that is, Desire for Recognition—that is, negating Action
performed for the sake of satisfying this Desire for Recognition—
that is, bloody Fighting for prestige—that is, the relation between
Master and Slave—that is, W ork—that is, historical evolution
which finally comes to the universal and homogeneous State and
to the absolute Knowledge that reveals complete Man realized in
and by this State. In short, to say that Man is Tim e is to say all
that Hegel says of Man in the Phenomenology. And it is also to
say that the existing Universe, and Being itself, must be such that
Man thus conceived of is possible and can be realized. Hence the
sentence that identifies Spirit and Time sums up Hegel’s whole
philosophy, just as the other schematic formulas enumerated above
sum up the whole philosophy of a Plato, an Aristotle, etc.
But in those schematic formulas, the Concept is what was men
tioned. Now, Hegel too says not only “Geist ist Z e it” but also
“die Zeit ist der Begriff der da is t”
T o be sure, these are two different ways of saying the same
thing. If Man is Time, and if Time is the “empirically existing
Concept,” it can be said that Man is the “empirically existing
Concept.” And so, indeed, he is: as the only speaking being in the
World, he is Logos (or Discourse) incarnate, Logos become flesh
29 Thus the olive tree of Pericles* time is “the same’* olive tree as that of
Venizelos’ time; but Pericles’ Greece is a past that never again becomes a present;
and, w ith respect to Pericles, Venizelos represents a future that as yet has never
been a past.
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80 The Hegelian Concept is identified with Hegelian Time. But the pre-
Hegelian Concept cannot be identified with pre-Hegelian Time; nor the Hegelian
Concept with pre-Hegelian Time; nor the pre-Hegelian Concept with Hegelian
Time.
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Λ Note on Eternity, Tim e, and the Concept
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detaches itself from the sensible hic et nunc; but it can thus detach
itself only because the hic et nunc—i.e., spatial being—is temporal,
because it annihilates itself in the Past. And the real which disap
pears into the Past preserves itself (as nonreal) in the Present in the
form of the Word-Concept. The Universe of Discourse (the
W orld of Ideas) is the permanent rainbow which forms above a
waterfall: and the waterfall is the temporal real which is annihilated
in the nothingness of the Past.88
T o be sure, the Real endures in Time as real. But by the fact of
enduring in Time, it is its own remembrance: at each instant it
realizes its Essence or Meaning, and this is to say that it realizes in
33 Kant himself saw that conceptual knowledge implied Memory, and Hegel
maintains this idea (which is Platonic, in the final analysis). For Hegel too, the
Ετ-imterung—that is, the internalization of the objective real effected in and by
the Concept which reveals this real but is m me—is also Erinnerung—that is,
remembrance. Now, there is Memory only where there is Time, where the real
present is annihilated through becoming unreal past. Generally speaking, in his
theory of the Concept, Hegel merely makes more precise (and consequently
transforms) the Kantian theory of the Schematismus. For Kant, the Concepts
(= Categories) apply to given Being (Sein) because Time serves as their
“Schema”—that is, as intermediary or “mediation” ( Vermittlung, in Hegel). But
this “mediation” is purely passive: Time is contemplation, intuition, Anschauung.
In Hegel, on the other hand, the “mediation” is active; it is Tat or T u n , Action
negating the given, the activity of Fighting and W ork. Now, this Negation of the
given (of Sein) or of the “present” is (historical) Time, and (historical) Time
is this active Negation. In Hegel as in Kant, therefore, Time is what allows the
application of the Concept to Being. But in Hegel, this Time that mediates con
ceptual thought is “materialized”: it is a movement (Bewegung), and a dialectical
“movement”—that is, precisely, it is active—hence it negates, hence it transforms
(the given), hence it creates (new things). If Man can understand (reveal) Being
by the Concept, it is because he transforms (given) Being in terms of this Concept
(which is then a Project) and makes it conform to it. Now, the transformation
of given Being in terms of the Concept-project is, precisely, conscious and volun
tary Action, Tun which is Arbeit and Kampf. For Kant, Being is in conformity
with the Concept, and the “mediation” by Time merely allows one to move from
one to the other without modifying either the one or the other. And that is why
Kant cannot explain this conformity of Being and the Concept: for him, it is a
given, that is to say, a chance (transcendentale Zufälligkeit). Hegel, on the other
hand, explains this conformity (which for him is a process of conforming) by
his dialectical ontology: Being becomes conformable to the Concept (at the end
of History) through the completed totality of negating Action which transforms
Being in terms of this same Concept. Therefore: in Kant, Time is “schema” and
passive “intuition”; in Hegel, it is “movement” and conscious and voluntary
“action.” Consequently, the Concept or the a priori in Kant is a “notion,” which
allows Man to conform to given Being; whereas in Hegel, the a priori Concept is
a “project,” which allows Man to transform given Being and make it conform.
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A Kote on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
the Present what is left of it after its annihilation in the Past; and
this something that is left and that it rerrealizes is its concept. A t
the moment when the present Real sinks into the Past, its Meaning
(Essence) detaches itself from its reality (Existence) ; and it is here
that appears the possibility of retaining this Meaning outside of the
reality by causing it to pass into the W ord. And this W ord reveals
the Meaning of the Real which realizes in the Present its own Past—
that is, this same Past that is “eternally” preserved in the W ord-
Concept. In short, the Concept can have an empirical existence in
the W orld (this existence being nothing other than human exist
ence) only if the W orld is temporal, only if Time has an empirical
existence in the W orld. And that is why it can be said that Time
is the empirically existing Concept.84
34 On the ontological level, this “metaphysical” (or cosmological) statement
means: Being must have a trinitary structure, as “Synthesis” or “Totality” which
unites “Thesis” or “Identity” with “Antithesis” or “Negativity” (this presence
of the negation of Being in existing Being is, precisely, Tim e). In order better to
understand the identification of the Concept with Time, it is useful to proceed as
follows: Let us form the concept of Being—that is, of the totality of what is.
What is the difference between this concept “Being” and Being itself? From the
point of view of content, they are identical, since we have made no “abstraction.”
And nonetheless, in spite of what Parmenides thought, the concept “Being” is not
Being (otherwise, there would be no Discourse, the Concept would not be Logos).
W hat distinguishes Being from the concept “Being” is solely the Being of Being
itself; for Being as Being is, but it does not exist as Being in the concept “Being”
(even though it “is” present by its content—i.e., as the meaning of the concept
“Being”). Therefore the concept “Being” is obtained by subtracting being from
Being: Being minus being equals the concept “Being” (and does not equal Nothing,
ness or “zero”; for the negation of A is not Nothingness, but “non-A”—that is,
“something”). Now, this subtraction of being from Being, at first sight para
doxical or even “impossible,” is in reality something quite “common” : it is lit
erally done “at every instant” and is called “Time.” For Time is what, at every
instant, takes away from Being—i.e., from the totality of what is (in the Present)—
its being, by causing it to pass into th e Past where Being is not (or no longer is).
But for there to be Time, there must “be” a Past (the pure or “eternal” Present
is not Time): therefore, the Past and Being that has sunk into the Past (past
Being) are not Nothingness; they are “something.” Now, a thing is something
only in the Present. In order to be something, therefore, the Past and past Being
must preserve themselves in the Present while ceasing to be present. And the
presence of past Being is the concept “Being”—that is, Being from which one has
taken away the being without transforming it into pure Nothingness. If you will,
the concept “Being,” therefore, is the “remembrance” of Being (in both senses:
Being is what “remembers,” and it “remembers” its being). But on our present
level, one does not generally speak of “memory”; the “memory” that we have in
mind is called “Time” (or more exactly “Temporality”—this general “medium”
of Being, in which “in addition” to the Present there is something else: the Past—
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Λ Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept
it did, outside of Tim e and the W orld. But then it would not be
understandable how the Concept could exist outside of the species,
how it could exist in the temporal W orld in the form of a word.
Therefore, it would not be understandable how Man could exist—
Man—i.e., that being which is not a dog, for example, and in
which the Meaning (Essence) “dog” nonetheless exists just as
much as in the dog, since there is in it the W ord-Concept “dog.”
For this to be possible, Being revealed by the Concept must be
essentially temporal—that is, finite, or possessing a beginning and
an ending in Time. Now, not the natural object, nor even the
animal or plant, but only the product of human W ork is essentially
temporal. Human W ork is what t empor alizés the spatial natural
W orld; W ork, therefore, is what engenders the Concept which
exists in the natural W orld while being something other than this
W orld: W ork, therefore, is what engenders Man in this W orld,
W ork is what transforms the purely natural W orld into a technical
W orld inhabited by Man—that is, into a historical W orld.
Only the W orld transformed by human W ork reveals itself in
and by the Concept which exists empirically in the W orld without
being the W orld. Therefore, the Concept is W ork, and W ork is
the Concept. And if, as Marx quite correctly remarks, W ork for
Hegel is “das W esen des Menschen” (“the very essence of Man” ),
it can also be said that man’s essence, for Hegel, is the Concept.
And that is why Hegel says not only that Time is the Begriff, but
also that it is the Geist. For if W ork temporalizes Space, the exist
ence of W ork in the W orld is the existence in this W orld of Time.
N ow , if Man is the Concept, and if the Concept is W ork, Man
and the Concept are also Tim e.
If all this holds true, it must first be said that there is conceptual
understanding only where there is an essentially temporal, that is,
historical, reality; and secondly, that only historical or temporal
existence can reveal itself by the Concept. O r in other words, con
ceptual understanding is necessarily dialectical.8δ
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Now, if this holds true and if Nature is only Space and not
Time, one would have to conclude that there is no conceptual
understanding of Nature. One would understand, in the full sense,
only where there is Time—i.e., one would truly understand only
History. In any case, it is only History that can and must be
understood dialectically.
One would have to say so. But Hegel does not. And that, I
believe, is his basic error. First of all, there is a vacillation in Hegel.
On the one hand, he says that Nature is only Space. On the other,
he clearly sees that (biological) life is a temporal phenomenon.
Hence the idea that Life (Leben) is a manifestation of Spirit
(G eist). But Hegel also sees, and he is the first to say so in so many
words, that truly human existence is possible only by the negation
of Life (as we know, the Risk of life in the Fight for prestige is
constituent of Man). Hence an opposition of Leben and Geist.
But if this opposition exists, Life is not historical; therefore there
is no biological dialectic; therefore there is no conceptual under
standing of Life.
Now, Hegel asserts that there is such an understanding. He
imagines (following Schelling) a dialectical biology, and he sets.it
forth in the Phenomenology (Chapter V, Section A, λ). T o be
sure, he denies the conceptual understanding or dialectic of non-
vital reality. But this merely leads him to say that the real W orld
is a living being. Hence his absurd philosophy of Nature, his
insensate critique of Newton, and his own “magical” physics which
discredited his System in the nineteenth century.
But there is yet more to say. Dialectical understanding applies
only to historical reality—that is, to the reality created by W ork
according to a Project. T o assert, as Hegel does, that all under
standing is dialectical and that the natural W orld is understandable
is to assert that this W orld is the work of a Demiurge, of a Creator-
God conceived in the image of working Man. And this is what
Hegel actually says in the Logik, when he says that his “Logic”
(that is, his ontology) is “the thought of God before the creation
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INTERPRETATION OF THE THIRD PART OF
CHAPTER VIII OF THE PH ENO M EN O LO G Y
OF SPIRIT (CONCLUSION)
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itself to the object and makes it accessible, cannot explain the origin of error that
eludes and conceals the object. If, then, the seat of error or false knowledge, or
rather, knowledge opposed to the object, is man o r the “subject,” he must have
something else for support in addition to passive contemplation of the given.
And this other thing, in Hegel, is called Negativity, Time, and Action (Tat, Tun,
Handeln). (Hence it is no t by chance that man makes errors when he loses his
sang-froid, hurries, or hasn’t enough time, or w hen he obstinately persists in
saying no).
Therefore, “Realism” is meaningful only to the extent that one opposes the
natural W orld or given Being (Sein) revealed by the Concept—that is, Being
with the Knowledge of Being—to Man understood as Action that negates given
Being. T o put it otherwise, it can also be said that Knowledge (Revelation) is
indifferently related both to natural Being and to human Being, both to Space
and to Time, both to Identity and to Negativity; hence there is no opposition
between Being and Knowledge; an opposition exists only between (known)
natural Being or Sein, and (known) human Being or T u n ; as for error and “sub
jective” knowledge in general—they presuppose this ontological opposition.
6 The disappearance of Man at the end of History, therefore, is n o t a cosmic
catastrophe: the natural W orld remains what it has been from all eternity. And
therefore, it is not a biological catastrophe either. Man remains alive as animal
in harmony with Nature or given Being. W hat disappears is Man properly so-
called—that is, Action negating the given, and Error, or in general, the Subject
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Interpretation of the Third Fart of Chapter VIII of Phenomenology of Spirit
opposed to the Object. In point of fact, the end of human Tim e or History—
that is, the definitive annihilation of Man properly so-called or of the free and
historical Individual—means quite simply the cessation of Action in the full sense
of the term. Practically, this means: the disappearance of wars and bloody revo
lutions. And also the disappearance of Philosophy; for since Man himself no
longer changes essentially, there is no longer any reason to change the (true)
principles which are at the basis of his understanding of the W orld and of him
self. But all the rest can be preserved indefinitely; art, love, play, etc., etc.; in
short, everything that makes Man happy. Let us recall that this Hegelian theme,
among many others, was taken up by Marx. History properly so-called, in which
men (“classes”) fight among themselves for recognition and fight against Nature
by work, is called in Marx “Realm of necessity” (Reich der Notwendigkeit);
beyond (jenseits) is situated the “Realm of freedom” (Reich der Freiheit), in
which men (mutually recognizing one another without reservation) no longer
fight, and w ork as little as possible (Nature having been definitively mastered—
that is, harmonized with Man). Cf. Das Kapital, Book III, Chapter 48, end of the
second paragraph of S III.
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more. “The definitive annihilation of Man properly so-called” also means the
definitive disappearance of human Discourse {Logos) in the strict sense. Animals
of the species Homo sapiens would react by conditioned reflexes to vocal signals
or sign “language,” and thus their so-called “discourses” would be like what is
supposed to be the “language” of bees. W hat would disappear, then, is nbt only
Philosophy or the search for discursive Wisdom, but also that Wisdom itself.
For in these post-historical animals, there would no longer be any “[discursive]
understanding of the W orld and of self.”
A t the period when I wrote the above note (1946), Man’s return to animality
did not appear unthinkable to me as a prospect for the future (more or less
near). But shortly afterwards (1948) I understood that the Hegelian-Marxist end
of History was not yet to come, but was already a present, here and now.
Observing what was taking place around me and reflecting on what had taken
place in the world since the Battle of Jena, I understood that Hegel was right
to see in this battle the end of History properly so-called. In and by this battle
the vanguard of humanity virtually attained the limit and the aim, that is, the
endy of Man’s historical evolution. W hat has happened since then was but an
extension in space of the universal revolutionary force actualized in France by
Robespierre-Napoleon. From the authentically historical point of view, the two
world wars with their retinue of large and small revolutions had only the effect
of bringing the backward civilizations of the peripheral provinces into line with
the most advanced (real or virtual) European historical positions. If the sovietiza-
ϋοη of Russia and the communization of China are anything more than or
different from the democratization of imperial Germany (by way of Hitlerism)
or the accession of Togoland to independence, nay, the self-determination of the
Papuans, it is only because the Sino-Soviet actualization of Robespierrian Bona
partism obliges post-Napoleonic Europe to speed up the elimination of the numer
ous more or less anachronistic sequels to its pre-revolutionary past. Already,
moreover, this process of elimination is more advanced in the N orth American
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extensions of Europe than in Europe itself. One can even say that, from a certain
point of view, the United States has already attained the final stage of Marxist
“communism,” seeing that, practically, all the members of a “classless society” can
from now on appropriate for themselves everything that seems good to them,
without thereby working any more than their heart dictates.
Now, several voyages of comparison made (between 1948 and 1958) to the
United States and the U.S.S.R. gave me the impression that if the Americans give
the appearance of rich Sino-Soviets, it is because the Russians and the Chinese
are only Americans who are still poor but are rapidly proceeding to get richer.
I was led to conclude from this that the “American way of life” was the type
of life specific to the post-historical period, the actual presence of the United
States in the W orld prefiguring the “eternal present” future of all of humanity.
Thus, Man’s return to animality appeared no longer as a possibility that was yet
to come, but as a certainty that was already present.
It was following a recent voyage to Japan (1959) that I had a radical change
of opinion on this point. There I was able to observe a Society that is one of a
kind, because it alone has for almost three centuries experienced life at the “end
of History”—that is, in the absence of all civil or external war (following the
liquidation of feudalism by the roturier Hideyoshi and the artificial isolation of
the country conceived and realized by his noble successor Yiyeasu). N ow, the
existence of the Japanese nobles, who ceased to risk their lives (even in duel)
and yet did not for that begin to work, was anything but animal.
“Post-historical” Japanese civilization undertook ways diametrically opposed
to the “American way.” N o doubt, there were no longer in Japan any Religion,
Morals, or Politics in the “European” or “historical” sense of these words. But
Snobbery in its pure form created disciplines negating the “natural” or “animal”
given which in effectiveness far surpassed those that arose, in Japan or elsewhere,
from “historical” Action—that is, from warlike and revolutionary Fights or from
forced Work. T o be sure, the peaks (equalled nowhere else) of specifically Japa-
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nese snobbery—the N oh Theater, the ceremony of tea, and the art of bouquets
of flowers—were and still remain the exclusive prerogative of the nobles and the
rich. But in spite of persistent economic and political inequalities, all Japanese
without exception are currently in a position to live according to totally for
malized values—that is, values completely empty of all “human” content in the
“historical” sense. Thus, in the extreme, every Japanese is in principle capable
of committing, from pure snobbery, a perfectly “gratuitous” suicide (the classical
épée of the samurai can be replaced by an airplane or a torpedo), which has
nothing to do with the risk of life in a Fight waged for the sake of “historical”
values that have social or political content. This seems to allow one to believe
that the recently begun interaction between Japan and the W estern W orld will
Anally lead not to a rebarbarization of the Japanese but to a “Japanization” of
the Westerners (including the Russians).
Now, since no animal can be a snob, every “Japanized” post-historical period
would be specifically human. Hence there would be no “definitive annihilation of
Man properly so-called,” as long as there were animals of the species Homo
sapiens that could serve as the “natural” support for what is human in men. But,
as I said in the above Note, an “animal that is in harmony with Nature or given
Being” is a living being that is in no way human. To remain human, Man must
remain a “Subject opposed to the Object,” even if “Action negating the given
and Error” disappears. This means that, while henceforth speaking in an adequate
fashion of everything that is given to him, post-historical Man must continue to
detach “form” from “content,” doing so no longer in order actively to trans
form the latter, but so that he may oppose himself as a pure “form” to himself
and to others taken as “content” of any sort.
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T he goal, [which is] absolute Knowledge [or the Wise Man who
is the author of Science ], that is, Spirit which knows-or-understands
itself as Spirit, [has as] the path [leading] to it the intemalizing-
Memory of [historical] Spirits, as they exist in themselves and
achieve the organization of their realm. Their preservation in the
aspect of their free-or-autonomous empirical-existence, which ap-
pears-or-is-revealed in the form of contingency, is History [i.e., the
vulgar historical science which merely narrates events]. And their
preservation in the aspect of their conceptually-understood organiza
tion, is the Science of appearing {erscheinenden) Knowledge [that
is, the Phenomenology ]. The two [taken] together, [chronicle-his
tory and the Phenomenology , that is,] conceptually-understood His
tory, form the internalizing-Memory and the Calvary of the abso
lute Spirit, the objective-Reality, the Truth [or revealed-Reality],
and the [subjective] Certainty of its throne, without which it would
be lifeless solitary-entity. Only
fro m the Chalice o f this Realm-of-Spirits rises up to it the foam
o f its infinity.
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THE DIALECTIC OF THE REAL AND THE
PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD IN HEGEL
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Everything that is true, the true entity, the True, das Wahre,
is a real entity, or Being itself, as revealed correctly and completely
by coherent discourse having a meaning (Logos). And this is what
Hegel also calls Begriff, concept; a term that means for him (ex
cept when, as in the writings of his youth and still occasionally
in the Phenomenology, he says: nur Begriff) not an “abstract
notion” detached from the real entity to which it is related, but
“conceptually understood reality.” The T rue and the Concept are,
as Hegel himself says, a Logisch-Reelles, something logical and
real at the same time, a realized concept or a conceived reality.
Now, “logical” thought that is supposed to be true, the concept
that is supposed to be adequate, merely reveal or describe Being
as it is or as it exists, without adding anything to it, without taking
anything away from it, without modifying it in any way whatso
ever. The structure of thought, therefore, is determined by the
structure of the Being that it reveals. If, then, “logical” thought
has three aspects, if in other words it is dialectical (in the broad
sense), this is only because Being itself is dialectical (in the broad
sense), because of the fact that it implies a “constituent-element” or
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the effort of comparing the two and of verifying in the strict sense,
so that—since [studied] Consciousness verifies itself—in this respect
too, only pure contemplation (Zusehen) is left for us to do.
W hen all is said and done, the “method” of the Hegelian Scien
tist consists in having no method or way of thinking peculiar to his
Science. The naive man, the vulgar scientist, even the pre-Hegelian
philosopher—each in his way opposes himself to the Real and
deforms it by opposing his own means of action and methods of
thought to it. The Wise Man, on the contrary, is fully and defini
tively reconciled with everything that is: he entrusts himself with
out reserve to Being and opens himself entirely to the Real without
resisting it. His role is that of a perfectly flat and indefinitely
extended mirror: he does not reflect on the Real; it is the Real that
reflects itself on him, is reflected in his consciousness, and is revealed
in its own dialectical structure by the discourse of the Wise Man
who describes it without deforming it.
If you please, the Hegelian “method” is purely “empirical” or
“positivist”: Hegel looks at the Real and describes what he sees,
everything that he sees, and nothing but what he sees. In other
words, he has the “experience” {Erfahrung) of dialectical Being
and the Real, and thus he makes their “movement” pass into his
discourse which describes them.
And that is what Hegel says in the Introduction to the Phe
nomenology (page 73, lines 7-11):
This dialectical movement which Consciousness carries out {ausübt)
in {an) itself, both in terms of its knowledge and its object, to the
extent that the new [and] true object arises {entspringt) out of this
movement [and appears] before Consciousness, is strictly speaking
what is called experience {Erfahrung).
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The Dialectic of the Real and the Phenomenological Method in Hegel
fore of truth; for by completing one another, the thesis and the
antithesis get rid of their one-sided and limited or, better, “subjec
tive” character, and as synthesis they reveal a more comprehensive
and hence a more comprehensible aspect of the “objective” real.
But if dialectic finally attains the adequation of discursive
thought to Reality and Being, nothing in Reality and Being cor
responds to dialectic. The dialectical movement is a movement of
human thought and discourse; but the reality itself which one
thinks and of which one talks is in no way dialectical. Dialectic is
but a method of philosophic research and exposition. And we see,
by the way, that the method is dialectical only because it implies
a negative or negating element: namely, the antithesis which op
poses the thesis in a verbal fight and calls for an effort of demon
stration, an effort, moreover, indistinguishable from a refutation.
There is truth properly so-called—that is, scientific or philosophic
truth, or better, dialectical or synthetical truth—only where there
has been discussion or dialogue—that is, antithesis negating a thesis.
In Plato, the dialectical method is still quite close to its historical
origins (the sophistic discussions). In his writings we are dealing
with genuine dialogues, in which the thesis and the antithesis are
presented by different persons (Socrates generally incarnates the
antithesis of all theses asserted by his interlocutors or expressed
successively by one of them). And as for the synthesis, it is gen
erally the auditor who must make it—the auditor who is the
philosopher properly so-called: Plato himself or that disciple who
is capable of understanding him. This auditor finally attains the
absolute truth which results from the entirety of the dialectic or
from the coordinated movement of all the dialogues, a truth that
reveals the “total” or “synthetical” Good which is capable of fully
and definitively “satisfying” the one who knows it and who is
consequently beyond discussion or dialectic.8
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truly total real created by the whole o f the real dialectic which the history of
philosophy reflects. But the presentation of that history (and of History in gen
eral) as a series of theses, antitheses, and syntheses is what will show him that he
has actually described (in a correct and complete way) the totality of the real—
i.e., that his description is a final or total synthesis.
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The Dialectic of the Reel and the Phenomenobgical Method in Hegel
10 In the Encyclopaedia Hegel says that every entity can “overcome” itself and
consequendy is dialectical. But in the Phenomenology he asserts that only the
human reality is dialectical, while Nature is determined by Identity alone (Cf. for
example page 145, lines 22-26 and page 563, lines 21-27). Personally I share the
point of view of the Phenomenology and do not accept the dialectic of natural
Being, of Sein. I cannot discuss that quesdon here. I would, however, say this:
the implication of Negadvity in identical Being (Sein) is equivalent to the presence
of Man in Reality; Man, and he alone, reveals Being and Reality through Dis
course; therefore revealed Being in its totality necessarily implies Negativity;
hence it is indeed a universal onto-logical category; but within the total Reality
one must distinguish, on the one hand, the purely identical natural reality, which
therefore is not dialectical in itself, which does not overcome itself dialectically,
and, on the other hand, the human, essendally negating reality, which dialectically
overcomes both itself and the natural identical reality which is “given” to it;
now, the dialecdcal overcoming of the given (by Fighting and W ork) necessarily
leads to its reveladon through Discourse; therefore Reality revealed by discourse—
i.e., Reality taken in its totality or concrete Reality—is indeed dialectical. Example:
the acorn, the oak, and the transformation of the acorn into the oak (as well
as the evolution of the species “oak”) are not dialectical; on the other hand, the
transformation of the oak into an oak table is a dialectical negation of the natural
given, that is, the creation of something essendally new: it is because Man “works”
with the oak that he has a “science” of the oak, of the acorn, and so on; this
science is dialectical, but not insofar as it reveals the acorn, its transformation
into the oak, and so on; it is dialectical insofar as it evolves as a science (of
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Nature) in the course of H istory; but it evolves thus dialectically only because
Man engages in real dialectical negations of the given through W ork and
Fighting.
11 The Being which “overcomes” itself as Being while continuing to be itself—
i.e., Being—is the concept “Being.” T o identify oneself with the tree without
becoming a tree is to form and to have the (adequate) concept of the tree. T o
become other while continuing to be oneself is to have and to preserve the
concept of one’s I (in and by “memory”).
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The negating being negates its identity to itself and becomes its
own opposite, but it continues to be the same being. And this, its
unity within opposition to itself, is its affirmation in spite of its
negation or “dissolution,” or, better, “transformation.” It is as this
negating affirmation of itself, as reaffirmation of its original identity
to itself, that the being is a “speculative” or “positively rational”
entity. Thus, Being which reaffirms itself as Being identical to
itself, after having negated itself as such, is neither Identity nor
Negativity, but Totality. And it is as Totality that Being is truly
and fully dialectical. But Being is dialectical Totality and not
tautological Identity because it is also Negativity. Totality is the
unifying-unity of Identity and Negativity: it is affirmation by
negation.
In other words, taken as Totality, Being is neither simply Being
in itself, nor simply Being for itself, but the integration of the two
or Being in and for itself (An-und-Fürsichsein). This is to say that
T otality is revealed Being or self-conscious Being (which Hegel
calls “absolute Concept,” “Idea,” or “Spirit”): it is split by Nega
tivity into given static Being (Sein) and its discursive “ideal”
opposite; but it is, or again becomes, one and homogeneous in and
by this doubling (Entzweiung) when the Totality of Being is cor
rectly revealed by the “total” or circular Discourse of the Wise
Man. Thus, in spite of the Negativity which it encloses and pre-
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supposes, the final Totality is just as much one and unique, homo
geneous and autonomous, as the first and primorial Identity. As
the Result of Negation, Totality is as much an Affirmation as is
the Identity which was negated in order to become Totality.
In the first explanatory Note added to § 82, Hegel explains why
Negativity is not Nothingness, why it does not lead to the pure
and simple destruction of the auto-negating being, but ends in a
new positive determination of this being, which in its totality once
more becomes absolutely identical to itself. (The Synthesis is a new
Thesis).
This is what he says (Volume V, page 106, lines 3-8):
Dialectic has a positive result because it has a specifically-determned
{bestimmten) contents that is, because its result is not truly (wahr
haft) empty [and] abstract Nothingness (Nichts), but the Negation
of certain specific-determinations (gewissen Bestimmungen), which
are contained in the result precisely because this latter is not an
immediate (unmittelbares) Nothingness, but a result.
(Dialectical) Negation is the negation of an Identity—that is,
of something determined, specific, which corresponds to an eternal
“idea” or a fixed and stable “nature.” Now, the specific-determina
tion (Bestimmtheit) of what is negated (and identical) determines
and specifies both the negation itself and its (total) result. The
negation of A has a positive or specifically determined content
because it is a negation of A, and not of M or N, for example, or
of some undetermined X. Thus, the “A” is preserved in the “non-
A”; or, if you please* the “A” is “dialectically overcome” (aufge
hoben) in the “non-A.” And that is why the non-A is not pure
Nothingness, but an entity that is just as “positive”—i.e., deter
mined or specific, or better, identical to itself—as the A which is
negated in it: the non-A is all this because it results from the nega
tion of a determined or specific A; or, again, the non-A is not
nowhere because the A has a fixed and stable place in the heart of
a well-ordered Cosmos.
If Identity is incarnated in the “A” which is identical to itself
(A = A ), Negativity is made concrete in and by (or as) the non
of the “non-A.” Taken in itself, this non is pure and simple
Nothingness: it is something only because of the A which it
negates. T he isolated non is absolutely undetermined: it represents,
in absolute freedom, independence with regard to every given de-
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will to become again what one is, in a different way from that
way in which one became it. Now, every negation transforms the
In-itself into For-itself, the unconscious into the conscious. The
will in question, therefore, is simply the desire of the totality of
the Real to understand itself in and by a coherent Discourse, and
to understand itself in its real becoming by reproducing this be
coming through Discourse or thought. From the real “N ” one
goes through negation (or the renunciation of life in favor of
knowledge) to the ideal “non-N = A,” and one reconstructs in
thought the route which ended at “N ,” this final term too being
here ideal (the “Idea” of the “Logik”). And this last negating action
of real Being is incarnated in the will of the Wise Man to produce
his Science.
However, the Wise Man’s negation is ideal and not real. There
fore it creates no new reality and is content to reveal the Real in
the totality of its becoming. The movement of Science, therefore,
is dialectical only to the extent that it reproduces or describes the
Dialectic of reality. And that is why this movement is not only
circular, but also cyclical: coming to the ideal “N,” one negates it
ideally (this negation being the desire to rethink the Science or to
reread the book which contains it) and thus one comes again to
the initial “A,” which forces one to go ahead until one comes again
to “N .” In other words, the Discourse of the Science which
describes the whole of the real Dialectic can be repeated indefi
nitely, but it cannot be modified in any way whatsoever. And this
is to say that this “dialectical” Discourse is the absolute Truth.
Concrete real Being is Totality. Hence it implies Identity and
Negativity, but as “dialectically overcome” in and by Totality.
Identity and Negativity do not exist really in an isolated state; just
like Totality itself, they are only complementary aspects of one
and the same real being. But in the discursive description of this
concrete real being, its three aspects must be described separately
and one after another. Thus, the correct description of the three
fold dialectical Real is a “dialectical” discourse accomplished in
three phases: the Thesis precedes the Antithesis, which is followed
by the Synthesis; this latter is then presented as a new Thesis;
and so on.
The Thesis describes the Real in its aspect of Identity. It reveals
a being by taking it as given—that is, as a static being that remains
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13 Identical being can nonetheless become what it is. In other words, it can
represent its eternal “nature” in the form of a temporal evolution', such as the
egg which becomes a hen (which lays a new egg). But this evolution is always
circular, or rather, cyclical. This is to say that one can always find a segment of
the evolution that will remain identical to itself indefinitely (the evolution which
goes from the egg to the new egg, for example).
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One can say that in the final analysis Hegel’s philosophy has a
dialectical character because it tries to give an account of the
phenomenon of Freedom, or, what is the same thing, of Action in
the proper sense of the term—that is, conscious and voluntary
human action; or, and this is again the same thing, because it wants
to give an account of History. In short, this philosophy is “dialec
tical” because it wants to give an account of the fact of Maris
existence in the W orld, by revealing or describing Man as he is
really—that is, in his irreducible specificity or as essentially dif
ferent from all that is only Nature.
If freedom is something other than a dream or a subjective
illusion, it must make its mark in objective reality ( W irklichkeit),
and it can do this only by realizing itself as action that operates
in and on the real. But if action is free, it must not be an automatic
result, so to speak, of whatever the real given is; therefore it must
be independent of this given, even while acting on the given and
amalgamating with it to the extent that it realizes itself and thus
itself becomes a given. N ow , it is Hegel’s merit to have understood
that this union in independence and this independence in union
occur only where there is negation of the given: Freedom = Ac
tion = Negativity. But if action is independent of the given real
because it negates it, it creates, in realizing itself, something essen
tially new in relation to this given. Freedom preserves itself in the
real, it endures really, only by perpetually creating new things
from the given. Now, truly creative evolution, that is, the ma
terialization of a future that is not a simple prolongation of the past
through the present, is called History: Freedom = Negativity =
Action = History. But what truly characterizes Man, what dis
tinguishes him essentially from the animal, is precisely his his
toricity. T o give an account of History, therefore, is to give an
account of Man understood as a free and historical being. And one
can give an account of Man thus understood only by taking
appear in his writings. The “dialectical” expressions he commonly uses are: “Im
mediacy,” “Mediation,” “Overcoming” (and their derivatives). Sometimes, Hegel
expresses the dialectical structure of Being and the Real by saying that they are
a “Syllogism” (Schluss, or dialektischer Schluss), in which the “middle term”
(Mitte) mediates the two “extremes” (Extreme) of the Immediate and the
Mediated. W hen Hegel wants to speak of the real dialectical process, he says
simply: “movement” (Bewegung; very rarely: dialektische Bewegung).
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just any table, but always this concrete table right here. Now, when
“naive” man or a representative of some science or other speaks
of this table, he isolates it from the rest of the universe: he speaks
of this table without speaking of what is not this table. Now, this
table does not float in empty space. It is on this floor, in this room,
in this house, in this place on Earth, which Earth is at a determined
distance from the Sun, which has a determined place within the
galaxy, etc., etc. T o speak of this table without speaking of the
rest, then, is to abstract from this rest, which in fact is just as real
and concrete as this table itself. T o speak of this table without
speaking of the whole of the Universe which implies it, or like
wise to speak of this Universe without speaking of this table which
is implied in it, is therefore to speak of an abstraction and not of a
concrete reality. And what is true in relation to space is also true
in relation to time. This table has a determined “history” and not
some other “history,” nor a past “in general.” It was made at a
given moment w ith this wood, taken at a given moment from this
tree, which grew at a given moment from this seed, etc., etc. In
short, what exists as a concrete reality is the spatial-temporal
totality of the natural world: everything that is isolated from it is
by that very fact an abstraction, which exists as isolated only in
and by the thought of the man who thinks about it.
All this is not new, for Parmenides was already aware of it. But
there is another aspect of the question that Parmenides and all the
pre-Hegelian philosophers forgot: this table (and even every table)
implies and presupposes something real and concrete that is called
a completed work. As soon as this table exists, then, to speak of the
concrete Real is also to speak of W ork. The concrete—that is,
total—Real implies human work just as well as it implies this table,
the wood from which it is made, and the natural world in general.
N ow the concrete Real which implies W ork has precisely that
threefold dialectical structure which is described by Hegelian
Science. For the real W ork implied in the Real really transforms
this Real by actively negating it as given and preserving it as
negated in the finished product, in which the given appears in a
“sublimated” or “mediated” form. And this is to say that this con
crete Real is precisely the real Dialectic or the “dialectical move
ment” which Hegel has in mind. And if the naive man, the vulgar
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15 Hegel’s reasoning is certainly correct: if the real Totality implies Man, and
if Man is dialectical, the Totality itself is dialectical. But as he goes on from there,
Hegel commits, in my opinion, a grave error. From the fact that the real Totality
is dialectical he concludes that its two fundamental constituent-elements, which
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are Nature and Man (= History), are dialectical. In doing this, he just follows
the tradition of ontological monism which goes back to the Greeks: everything
that is, is in one and the same manner. The Greeks, who philosophically dis
covered Nature, extended their “naturalistic” ontology, dominated by the single
category of Identity, to Man. Hegel, who (in continuing the efforts of Descartes,
Kant, and Fichte) discovered the “dialectical” ontological categories of Negativity
and Totality by analyzing the human being (Man being understood in con
formity with the Judaeo-Christian pre-philosophic tradition), extended his “an
thropological” dialectical ontology to Nature. Now, this extension is in no wise
justified (and it is not even discussed in Hegel). For if the final foundation of
Nature is identical given static Being (Sein), one finds in it nothing comparable
to the negating Action (Tun) which is the basis of specifically human or his
torical existence. The classic argument: everything that is, is in one and the same
manner, should not have obliged Hegel to apply one and the same ontology
(which, for him, is a dialectical ontology) to Man and Nature, for he himself says
(in the Phenomenology) that “the true being of Man is his a c t i o n Now, Action
( = Negativity) acts otherwise than Being (= Identity) is. And in any case there
is an essential difference between Nature on the one hand, which is revealed only
by Man’s Discourse—i.e., by another reality than that which it is itself—and Man
on the other hand, who himself reveals the reality which he is, as well as the
(natural) reality which he is not. Therefore it seems necessary to distinguish,
within the dialectical ontology of revealed Being or Spirit (dominated by
Totality), a nondialectical ontology (of Greek and traditional inspiration) of
Nature (dominated by Identity), and a dialectical ontology (of Hegelian in
spiration, but modified accordingly) of Man or of H istory (dominated by Nega
tivity). Hegel’s monistic error has two serious consequences. On the one hand,
using his single dialectical ontology as a basis, he tries to elaborate a dialectical
metaphysic and a dialectical phenomenology of Nature, both clearly unacceptable,
which should, according to him, replace “vulgar” science (ancient, Newtonian,
and hence our own science to o ). On the other hand, by accepting the dialecticity
of everything that exists, Hegel had to consider the circularity of knowledge as
the only criterion for truth. Now we have seen that the circularity of knowledge
relative to Man is possible only at the end of History; for as long as Man changes
radically—that is, creates himself as other than he is—even his correct description
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is but a parm i or entirely provisional “truth.” If, then, Nature, as well as Man,
is creative or historical, truth and science properly so-called are possible only
“at the end of time.” Until then there is no genuine knowledge (Wissen), and
one can only choose between skepticism (relativism, historicism, nihilism, and so
on) and faith (Glauben) .
But if one accepts that the traditional “identical” ontology actually does apply
to Nature, a truth relative to Nature, and hence a science of nature, are in prin
ciple possible at any moment of time. And since Man is nothing but an active
negation of Nature, a science of Man is also possible, to the extent that he belongs
to the past and the present. Only Man’s future would then be given over to
skepticism or faith (that is, to the certainty of hope, in Saint Paul’s expression) :
since it is a “dialectical”—i.e., creative or free—process, History is essentially
unforeseeable, in contrast to “identical” Nature.
Moreover, it seems that an ontological dualism is indispensable to the explana
tion of the very phenomenon of History. As a matter of fact, History implies and
presupposes an understanding of past generations by the generations of the present
and future. Now if Nature, as well as Man, changed. Discourse could not be
communicated throughout time. If stones and trees, and also the bodies and the
animal “psychism” of the men of the time of Pericles, were as different from ours
as the citizens of the ancient city are from us, we would be able to understand
neither a Greek treatise on agriculture and architecture nor Thucydides’ history,
nor Plato’s philosophy. Generally speaking, if we can understand any language
which is not our own, it is only because it contains words that are related to
realities that are everywhere and always identical to themselves: if we can know
that “Hund" and “canis" mean “dog,” it is because the real dog exists, which is
the same in Germany and in France, in Rome in the time of Caesar and in con
temporary Paris. N ow these identical realities are precisely natural realities. An
image can show that an attempt at a dualistic ontology is not absurd. Let us
consider a gold ring. T here is a hole, and this hole is just as essential to the ring
as the gold is: without the gold, the “hole” (which, moreover, would not exist)
would not be a ring; but without the hole the gold (which would nonetheless
exist) would not be a ring either. But if one has found atoms in the gold, it is
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The Dialectic of the Real and the Phenomenological Method in Hegel
not at all necessary to look fo r them in the hole. And nothing indicates that the
gold and the hole are in one and the same manner (of course, what is involved
is the hole as “hole,” and not the air which is “in the hole” ). The hole is a
nothingness that subsists (as the presence of an absence) thanks to the gold which
surrounds it. Likewise, Man who is Action could be a nothingness that “nihilates”
in being, thanks to the being which it “negates.” And there is no reason why the
final principles of the description of the nihilation of Nothingness (or the
annihilation of Being) have to be the same as the principles of the description
of the being of Being.
The first attempt (a very insufficient one, by the way) at a dualistic (“identical”
and “dialectical”) ontology (or more exactly, metaphysic) was made by Kant,
and it is in this that his unequaled greatness resides, a greatness comparable to
that of Plato, who established the principles of “identical” (monistic) ontology.
Since Kant, Heidegger seems to be the first to have posed the problem of a dual
ontology. One does not get the impression that he has gone beyond the dualistic
phenomenology which is found in the first volume of Sein und Zeit (which is
only an introduction to the ontology that is to be set forth in Volume II, which
has not yet appeared). But this is sufficient to make him recognized as a great
philosopher. As for the dualistic ontology itself, it seems to be the principal
philosophic task of the future. Almost nothing has yet been done.
10 In the dualistic hypothesis, Ontology would describe Being that realizes itself
as Nature separately from Action that negates Being and realizes itself (in Nature)
as History.
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The Dialectic of the Real and the Phenomenological Method in Hegel
haben). But given that at the same time the individual is only what
he has done (getan), his body is also the expression (Ausdruck) of
himself produced (hervorgebrachte) by himself; [his body] is at
the same time a sign (Zeichen), which has not remained an immedi
ate thing (unmittelbare Sache), but [which is something] by which
the individual only makes known (erkennen) what he is in the sense
that he puts his innate nature to work (ins Werk richtet).
T o say that Man is, exists, and “appears” (erscheint) as being
and existing “in and for himself” is to say that he is Being in and
for itself—i.e., Totality or Synthesis; therefore, it is to say that he
is a dialectical (or “spiritual”) entity, that his real and “phe
nomenal” existence is a “movement.” 18 N ow every dialectical
Totality is also, and above all, Identity—that is, Being in itself or
Thesis. Ontologically speaking this Identity is Sein, given-Being;
and metaphysically speaking, it is Nature. In Man who is in the
process of “appearing,” the aspect (Seite) or constituent-element
(Moment) of Identity, Sein, or Nature, is his “body” (Leib) or
his “innate nature” (ursprüngliche Natur) in general.
By the aspect of his body, Man is a natural being with fixed
characteristics, a “specifically determined” animal which lives in
the bosom of Nature, having its “natural place” (topos) in it. And
it is immediately clear that dialectical anthropology leaves no place
for an “afterlife” for Man outside of the natural W orld. Man is
truly dialectical—that is, human—only to the extent that he is also
Nature, “identical” spatial or material entity: he can become and
be truly human only by being and remaining at the same time an
animal, which like every animal is annihilated in death.
But in Man the Identity or the In-itself is not only his body in
the strict sense: it is his “innateness” in general—that is, “That
which he has not himself done” First of all, it is Man’s “innate
nature”—that is, everything that exists in him through biological
heredity alone: his “character,” his “talents,” his “tastes,” ànd so on.
And it is also the simple fact of being bom “slave” or “free” (als
Freier geboren). For Hegel, this purely innate would-be “freedom”
(as well as hereditary nobility and belonging to a “class” in gen-
18 By accepting that only the human being is dialectical in the Hegelian sense
of the term, one can say that Hegel’s Dialectic is an existential dialectic in the
modern sense of the word. In any case, this is what the Dialectic described in the
Phenomenology is.
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speaks of itself and of what it is not: “he is for himself, that is, he
is a free action.” And by acting, he realizes and manifests Nega
tivity or his Difference from natural given Being.
On the “phenomenological” level, then, Negativity is nothing
other than human Freedom—that is, that by which Man differs
from animal.21 But if Freedom is ontologically Negativity, it is
because Freedom can be and exist only as negation. N ow in order
to negate, there must be something to negate: an existing given
and hence an identical given-Being. And that is why man can exist
freely—that is, humanly—only while living as an animal in a given
natural W orld. But he lives humanly in it only to the extent that
he negates this natural or animal given. N ow negation is realized
as accomplished action, and not as thought or simple desire. Hence
it is neither in his more or less “elevated” “ideas” (or his imagina
tion), nor by his more or less “sublime” or “sublimated” “aspira
tions” that Man is truly free or really human, but only in and by
effective—i.e., active—negation of the given real. Freedom does
not consist in a choice between two givens: it is the negation of
the given, both of the given which one is oneself (as animal or as
“incarnated tradition”) and of the given which one is not (the
natural and social W orld). Moreover, these two negations are in
reality only one. T o negate the natural or social W orld dialecti
cally—that is, to negate it while preserving it—is to transform it;
and then one must either change oneself to adapt to it, or perish.
Inversely, to negate oneself while maintaining oneself in existence
is to change the aspect of the W orld, since this W orld then implies
a modified constituent-element. Thus, Man exists humanly only
to the extent that he really transforms the natural and social W orld
by his negating action and he himself changes because of this
transformation; or, what is the same thing, to the extent that he
transforms the W orld as a result of an active auto-negation of his
animal or social “innate nature.”
T he freedom which is realized and manifested as dialectical or
negating Action is thereby essentially a creation. For to negate the
given without ending in nothingness is to produce something that
did not yet exist; now, this is precisely what is called “creating.”
21 Cf. Rousseau: “Therefore it is not so much understanding which constitutes
the distinction of man among the animals as it is his being a free agent/’ (Discourse
on the Origin of Inequality, translation by R. Masters; New York, 1964, page 114O
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Inversely, one can truly create only by negating the given real.
For this real is somehow omnipresent and dense, since there is
nothing (nothing but Nothingness) outside of it or other than it;
hence there is, so to speak, no place for newness in the W orld;
rising up from Nothingness, newness can penetrate into Being and
exist only by taking the place of given-Being—that is, by negating
it.
In the dialectical interpretation of Man—i.e., of Freedom or
Action—the terms “negation” and “creation” must, moreover, be
taken in the full sense. W hat is involved is not replacing one given
by another given, but overcoming the given in favor of what does
not (yet) exist, thus realizing what was never given. This is to say
that Man does not change himself and transform the W orld for
himself in order to realize a conformity to an “ideal” given to him
(imposed by God, or simply “innate”). He creates and creates
himself because he negates and negates himself “without a precon
ceived idea”: he becomes other solely because he no longer wants
to be the same. And it is only because he no longer wants to be
what he is that what he will be or will be able to be is an “ideal”
for him, “justifying” his negating or creative action—i.e., his
change—by giving it a “meaning.” Generally speaking. Negation,
Freedom, and Action do not arise from thought, nor from con
sciousness of self or of external things; on the contrary, thought
and consciousness arise from Negativity which realizes itself and
“reveals” itself (through thought in Consciousness) as effective
free action.
In fine, Negativity (or Freedom) which realizes and manifests
itself as creative Action is Man who, while living in the natural
W orld, continues to be himself and yet is not always (or “neces
sarily”) the same. Hence we can say that dialectical Anthropology
is the philosophic science of Man as he appears in the (pre-philo-
sophic) Judaeo-Christian conception—that is, of Man who is sup
posed to be able to convert himself, in the full sense of the word,
or to become essentially and radically other. According to this
conception, Man who was created perfect can nevertheless radi
cally pervert this innate or given nature; but essentially perverted
Man can repudiate the “old Adam” and thus become the “new
Adam,” different from the first but still more perfect than he;
Man can “overcome” the hereditary sin which nonetheless deter-
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mines his nature and thus become a saint, who is nonetheless some
thing other than Man before the fall; a pagan whose “natural
place” is Hell can “convert himself” to Christianity and thus win
his way to Heaven; etc., etc. N ow in the Hegelian or dialectical
conception of Man, things work out in exactly the same way: the
steps of the Dialectic described in the Phenomenology are nothing
but a series of successive “conversions” that Man carries out in the
course of history and that are described by the Wise Man who
lives at the end of history and who is himself “converted” to the
absolute truth (incarnated in the Napoleonic Empire).
In agreement with Aristotle, Hegel accepts a radical difference
between Master and Slave. According to Hegel, Man can appear
in Nature or create himself as Man from the animal that he was,
only if a Fight to the death for the sake of Recognition {Aner
kennen) leads to a relation between a free man and a man who is
enslaved to him. Hence, from the beginning, Man is necessarily
either Master or Slave. And this is what Aristotle said But accord
ing to Aristotle (who did not see the dialecticity of human exist
ence), this will always be the case: Man is born with a slavish or
free “nature,” and he will never be able to overcome or modify it;
Masters and Slaves form something like two distinct animal “spe
cies,” irreducible or “eternal,” neither of which can leave its
“natural place” in the immutable Cosmos. According to Hegel, on
the other hand, the radical difference between Master and Slave
exists only at the beginning, and it can be overcome in the course
of time; because for him, Mastery and Slavery are not given or
innate characteristics. In the beginning at least, Man is not bom
slave or free, but creates himself as one or the other through free
or voluntary Action. The Master is the one who went all the way
in the Fight, being ready to die if he was not recognized; whereas
the Slave was afraid of death and voluntarily submitted, by recog
nizing the Master without being recognized by him. But it was one
and the same innate animal nature that was transformed by the
free Action of the Fight into slavish or free human “nature”: the
Master could have created himself as Slave, and the Slave as Master.
There was no “reason” for one of the two animals (of the species
Homo sapiens) to become Master rather than Slave. Mastery and
Slavery have no “cause” ; they are not “determined” by any given;
they cannot be “deduced” or foreseen from the past which pre-
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The Dialectic of the Real and the Phenomenological Method in Hegel
ceded them: they result from a free Act {Tat). That is why Man
can “overcome” his slavish “nature” and become free, or better,
(freely) create himself as free; even if he is born in Slavery, he
can negate his innate slavish “nature.” And all of History—that is,
the whole “movement” of human existence in the natural W orld—
is nothing but the progressive negation of Slavery by the Slave, the
series of his successive “conversions” to Freedom (which, how
ever, will not be the “identical” or “thetical” freedom of the Mas
ter, who is free only in himself, but the “total” or “synthetical”
freedom, which also exists for itself, of the Citizen of the universal
and homogeneous State).22
If Negativity is Freedom which realizes itself as Action negating
the given, and if it is the very humanity of Man, Negativity and
Man can “appear” for the first time in Nature only as a being
that negates or “overcomes” its innate animal nature: Man creates
his humanity only by negating himself as animal. And that is why
the first “appearance” of Negativity is described in the Phenome
nology (Chapter IV) as a Fight to the death for Recognition, or
more exactly, as the Risk of life {Wagen des Lebens) which this
Fight implies. The Desire for Recognition which provokes the
Fight is the desire for a desire—that is, for something that does not
exist really (since Desire is the “manifest” presence of the absence
of a reality) : to want to be “recognized” is to want to be accepted
as a positive “value”—that is, precisely speaking, to cause oneself
to be “desired.” T o want to risk one’s lifey which is the whole
reality of a living being, in favor of something that does not exist
and cannot exist as inert or merely living real things exist—this,
then, is indeed to negate the given which one is oneself, this is to
be free or independent of it. Now, to negate oneself, in this full
sense, and nevertheless to preserve oneself in existence, is indeed
22 In truth, only the Slave “overcomes” his “nature” and finally becomes
Citizen. The Master does not change: he dies rather than cease to be Master. T he
final fight, which transforms the Slave into Citizen, overcomes Mastery in a
nondialectical fashion: the Master is simply killed, and he dies as Master. Hence
it is only in its slavish aspect that human existence is dialectical or “total”: the
Master represents, fundamentally, only Identity (human Identity, admittedly).
Therefore one can say that Aristotle correctly described the Master. He erred
only in believing that the Master is Man in general'—that is, in denying the
humanity of the Slave. He was right in saying that the Slave as Slave is not truly
human; but he was wrong in believing that the Slave could not become human.
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The Dialectic of the Real and the Phenomenological Method In Hegel
which the only reward is the resulting glory and which can be
explained neither by the instinct of preservation (defense of life
or search for food) nor by that of reproduction; no animal has
ever fought a duel to pay back an insult that harmed none of its
vital interests, just as no female has died “defending her honor”
against a male. Therefore it is by negating acts of this kind that
Man realizes and manifests his freedom—that is, the humanity
which distinguishes him from the animals.
But Fighting and Risk are not the only “appearance” of Nega
tivity or of Freedom—that is, of Humanity—in the natural W orld:
W ork is another. N o animal works, strictly speaking, for it never
transforms the world in which it lives according to projects that
cannot be explained by the given conditions of its real existence in
this world. A land animal never constructs machines to allow it to
live in an element other than its natural one: under water, for
example, or in the air. Now, Man by his work has constructed the
submarine and the airplane. Actually, W ork essentially transforms
the given natural W orld and removes the worker from his “natural
place” in this W orld, and thus essentially changes him too, only to
the extent that the action in question is truly negating—that is, to
the extent that it does not come from some “instinct” or from a
given or innate tendency, but negates a hereditary instinct and
overcomes innate “nature,” which then “manifests” itself as “lazi
ness” that opposes the action. An animal at liberty is never lazy,
for if it were, it would die of hunger or not propagate. Man can
be lazy only at work, precisely because work, properly so-called,
corresponds to no vital necessity.
Since it is a realization and a “manifestation” of Negativity,
W ork is always a “forced” work. Man must force himself to work,
he must do violence to his “nature.” And, at least at the beginning,
it is another who forces him to it and thus does him violence. In
the Bible it was God who imposed W ork on fallen man (but that
was just a “necessary” consequence of the fall, which was “free”;
here too, then, work is the consequence of a free act, the manifesta
tion of the negating action by which Man negated his innate “per
fect” nature). In Hegel, W ork “appears” for the first time in
Nature in the form of slavish w ork imposed by the first Master
on his first Slave (who submitted to him, moreover, voluntarily,
since he could have escaped from slavery and work by accepting
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
ing on (just as he thinks and talks about Nature as the “raw ma
teriar’ for his works); and it is only by thinking and speaking
that Man can truly work. Thus, the working Slave is conscious
of what he is doing and of what he has done: he understands the
W orld which he has transformed, and he becomes aware of the
necessity of changing himself in order to adapt to it; hence he
wants to “keep up with progress,” the progress which he himself
realizes and which he reveals through Ws discourse.25
W ork, therefore, is the authentic “appearance” of Negativity
or Freedom, for W ork is what makes Man a dialectical being,
which does not eternally remain the same, but unceasingly becomes
other than it is really in the given and as given. The Fight, and the
Master who incarnates it, are only the catalysts, so to speak, of
History or of the dialectical “movement” of human existence: they
engender this movement, but are not affected by it themselves.
All (true) Masters are of equal worth as Masters, and none of them
has by himself (to the extent that he is a Master) overcome his
28If he is truly self-conscious, Man who has created a technical W orld knows
that he can live in it only by living in it (also) as a worker. That is why Man
can want to continue working even after ceasing to be a Slave: he can become a
free W orker. Actually, W ork is bom from the Desire for Recognition (by the
intermediary of the Fight), and it preserves itself and evolves in relation to this
same Desire. T o realize a technical progress, humanity must w ork more or better—
that is, it must supply an increase of effort “against nature.” T o be sure, there
have always been men who knew that they worked “for glory.” (By itself, the
desire to know the given leads to scientific “observation” of it, but not to its
transformation by W ork; not even to “experimental” intervention, as the example
of the Greeks shows.) But most people think that they work more in order to
gain more money or to augment their “well-being.” However, it is easy to see
that the surplus gained is absorbed by expenses of pure prestige and that the
supposed “well-being” consists mostly in living better than one’s neighbor or no
worse than the others. Thus, the surplus of work and hence technical progress
are in reality a function of the desire for “recognition.” To be sure, the “poor”
profit from technical progress. But they are not the ones who create it, nor do
their needs or desires. Progress is realized, started, and stimulated by the “rich”
or the “powerful” (even in the socialist State). And these men are “materially”
satisfied. Therefore, they act only according to the desire to increase their “pres
tige” or their power, or, if you please, from duty. (Duty is something quite
different from the love of one’s neighbor or “charity,” which has never en
gendered a technical progress nor, consequently, really overcome misery. This
is precisely because “charity” is not a negating action, but the instinctive out
pouring of an innate “charitable nature,” a nature in fact perfectly compatible
with the “imperfections” of the given W orld which nonetheless cause it to
“suffer.” Kant refused to see a “virtue”—i.e., a specifically human manifestation—
in an action that results from an “instinctive inclination,” a Neigung.)
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29 Napoleon was profoundly annoyed and saddened when his Malayan gar
dener took him for a legendary conqueror of the Far East. A woman of fashion
is annoyed and saddened when she sees a friend wearing the dres that was sold
to her as uthe only one of its kind.” Generally speaking, no one wants to be that
“average man” whom one often talks about, but always as someone other than
oneself.
436
T h e D ialectic o f th e R eal an d th e Phenom enological M eth od in H egel
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30 In truth, the Wise Man is no longer “individual” in the sense that he would
be essentially different from all others. If Wisdom consists in the possession of
the Truth (which is one, and which is the same for Hegel and for all his readers),
a Wise Man is in no respect different from another Wise Man. This is to say
that he is not human in the same way as historical Man (nor free in the same
sense either, since he no longer negates anything through action): rather, he is
“divine” (but mortal). The Wise Man is an Individual, however, in the sense
that it is in his existential particu larity that he possesses the universal Science.
In this sense, he is still human (and therefore mortal).*
*38
The D ialectic o f th e Real an d th e Phenom enological M e th o d in H egel
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Let us abstract from the fact that this passage asserts that every
finite entity is dialectical and is necessarily dialectical. That is an
imprecision of language or an extremely serious error, which I
would not want to dwell upon. Let us remember only that, taking
the context into account, the passage asserts that only a finite entity
can be dialectical, that every entity that is (or can be) dialectical
is necessarily finite in its very being, as well as in its objective
reality and in its “phenomenal” empirical existence. T o say that
Man is dialectical, therefore, is not only to say that he is individual,
free, and historical, but also to assert that he is essentially finite.
Now, the radical finiteness of being and of reality “appears” on
the human “phenomenal” level as that thing which is called Death.
Consequently to say that Man “reveals” himself as historical free
Individual (or as “Personality”) and that he “appears” as essen
tially mortal in the strict and full sense of the term is to express
one and the same thing in different ways: a historical free indi
vidual is necessarily mortal, and a truly mortal being is always a
historical free individual.
T o remove the paradoxical aspect of this assertion, it must im
mediately be said that for Hegel human death is something essen
tially other than the finiteness of purely natural beings. Death is a
dialectical finiteness. The dialectical being—that is, Man—is the
only one who is mortal in the strict sense of the word. The death
of a human being is essentially different from the “end” of an
animal or plant, as well as the “disappearance” of a thing by simple
“wear and tear.”
In a fragment of the young Hegel (1795?), devoted to an
analysis of Love (edited by Nohl, Hegels theologische Jugend
schriften, Tübingen, 1907), we find a passage relating to death, in
which the principle themes which he was to develop later already
appear (page 379, last paragraph, and page 381):
Given that Love is a sentiment (Gefühl) of the living (Lebendigen),
Lovers can distinguish themselves [from one another] only in the
sense that they are mortal, [that is, in the sense] that they think this
possibility of separation, [and] not in the sense that something may
really be separated, not in the sense that a possibility joined to an
existing being (Sein) is a reality ( Wirkliches). There is no [raw or
given] matter in Lovers [as Lovers], they are a living Whole [or a
spiritual Whole, for at that time Hegel identified Life and Spirit];
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T h e D ia lectic o f th e Real an d th e Phenom enological M e th o d in H egel
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
the passage just cited is Man (or, more exactly, pre-human man)
before the Fight, animated by the Desire for Recognition, which
(in the beginning) is the same for all men. “The beings that are
separated from one another” are the Master and the Slave who are
created in and by the “first” Fight, and who are essentially different
from one another. Finally, the “newly reunited” is no longer
either the sexual act or the child, but the satisfied Citizen and the
Wise Man, who “synthetize” Mastery and Slavery, and who result
from the whole of humanity’s historical evolution, as integrating
totality of the “dialectical movement” of Fighting and W ork.
Generally speaking, the complete and adequate “revelation” of the
dialectical human reality is no longer Love, which is a unified
total given “sentiment of the living,” but Wisdom or Science—
the lover wants to be loved, that is, recognized as absolute or universal value in
his very particularity, which distinguishes him from all others. Hence Love realizes
(to a certain extent) Individuality, and that is why it can (to a certain extent)
procure Satisfaction. In any case it is a specifically human phenomenon, for in
Love one desires another desire (the love of the other) and not an empirical
reality (as, for example, when one simply “desires” someone). W hat Hegel (im
plicitly) reproaches Love for in the Phenomenology is on the one hand its “pri
vate” character (one can be loved by only a very few persons, whereas one can
be universally recognized), and on the other hand its “lack of seriousness,” since
Risk of life is absent (only this Risk is a truly objective realization of the specifi
cally human content which essentially distinguishes Man from the animal). N ot
presupposing Risk, Love ( = amorous Recognition) does not presuppose Action
in general. Therefore it is not Action {Tun) or Product {W erk) that are recog
nized in Love as absolute values, but given-Being {Sein)—i.e., precisely that
which is not truly human in Man. (As Goethe said: one loves a man not because
of what he does but for what he is; that is why one can love a dead man, for the
man who does truly nothing would already be like a dead man; that is also why
one can love an animal, without being able to “recognize” the animal: let us
remember that there have never been duels between a man and an animal—or a
woman; let us also remember that it is “unworthy of a man” to dedicate himself
entirely to love: the legends of Hercules, Samson, and so on.) Consequently,
even a man “happy in love” is not fully “satisfied” as long as he is not universally
“recognized.” In accepting the point of view of the Phenomenology, one would
have to say that Man can truly love (which no animal can do) only because he
has already created himself beforehand as human being through the Risk incurred
in a Fight for Recognition. And that is why only Fighting and W ork (born from
the Desire for Recognition properly so-called) produce a specifically human
objective-reality {Wirklichkeit), a technical and social, or better, historical,
W orld; the objective-reality of Love is purely natural (sexual act, birth of the
child): its human content always remains purely internal or private {innerlich).
History, and not Love, is what creates Man; Love is only a secondary “mani
festation” of Man who already exists as human being.
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247
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL·
that is, one’s autonomy or freedom. And once one can commit
suicide in order to escape from any given situation whatsoever,
one can say with Hegel that “the faculty of death” is the “appear
ance” of “pure freedom,” or absolute freedom (at least poten
tially), with respect to every given in general.38 But if suicide
(which obviously distinguishes Man from the animal) “manifests”
freedom, it does not realize freedom, for it ends in nothingness and
not in a free existence. W hat reveals and realizes freedom, accord
ing to Hegel, is the Fight for pure prestige, carried on without any
biological necessity for the sake of Recognition alone. But this
Fight reveals and realizes freedom only to the extent that it implies
the Risk of life—that is, the real possibility of dying.84
Death, therefore, is only a complementary aspect of Freedom.
But to what extent is it also a complement of Individuality?
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL·
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2 5 5
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
2 5 6
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T he D ialectic o f th e R eal a n d th e Phenom enological M eth od in H egel
In summary:
Hegelian Dialectic is not a method of research or of philosophical
exposition, but the adequate description of the structure of Being,
and of the realization and appearance of Being as well.
T o say that Being is dialectical is first to say (on the ontological
level) that it is a Totality that implies Identity and Negativity.
Next, it is to say (on the metaphysical level) that Being realizes
itself not only as natural W orld, but also as a historical (or
human) World, these two W orlds exhausting the totality of the
objective-real (there is no divine W orld). It is finally to say (on
the phenomenological level) that the objective-real empirically-
exists and appears not only as inanimate thing, plant, and animal,
but also as essentially temporal or mortal historical free individual
(who fights and who w orks). Or, to put it otherwise, to say that
there is Totality, or Mediation, or dialectical Overcoming, is to
say that in addition to given-Being, there is also creative Action
which ends in a Product.
41God and the afterlife have always been denied by certain men. But Hegel
was the first to try to formulate a complete philosoph y that is atheistic and finitist
in relation to Man (at least in the great L ogik and the earlier writings). H e not
only gave a correct description of fin ite human existence on the “phenomenologi
cal” level, which allowed him to use the fundamental categories of Judaeo-
Christian thought without any inconsistency. He also tried (without completely
succeeding, it is true) to complete this description with a metaphysical and
ontological analysis, also radically atheistic and finitist. But very few of his readers
have understood that in the final analysis dialectic meant atheism. Since Hegel,
atheism has never again risen to the metaphysical and ontological levels. In our
times Heidegger is the first to undertake a complete atheistic philosophy. But he
does not seem to have pushed it beyond the phenomenological anthropology
developed in the first volume of Sein u n d Z e it (the only volume that has ap
peared). This anthropology (which is without a doubt remarkable and authenti
cally philosophical) adds, fundamentally, nothing new to the anthropology of the
P hen om en ology (which, by the way, would probably never have been under
stood if Heidegger had not published his book): but atheism or ontological
finitism are implicitly asserted in his book in a perfectly consequent fashion. This
has not prevented certain readers, who are otherwise competent, from speaking
of a Heideggerian theology and from finding a notion of an afterlife in his
anthropology.
259
APPENDIX
Edited, translated, and correlated with the Hoffmeister (1952) and Baillie (1931)
editions of the Phenom en ology b y Kenley and Christa Dove.
261
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
262
Appendix: The Structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit
tions and Transitions which surround them and which are written
from the point of view of Absolute Knowledge (für uns). The
Analysis also brings to light the dialectical (triadic) articulations
of the phenomenological parts themselves, while pointing out the
Notes inserted für uns.
In Chapter VIII, the distinction between für es and für uns
comes to disappear, because this chapter describes the self-con
sciousness of the W ise Man possessing Absolute Knowledge—
that is to say, Hegel himself—which “appears” to that self (für es)
as it is in reality (an sich) and also as it appears to those who
truly understand it (für uns). At this stage the phenomenological
description therefore coincides with the philosophical or “scien
tific” analysis. However, this coinciding of the für es and the
für uns only comes about at the end of the chapter. Therefore
the chapter has a general Introduction,, and its first Section has an
Introduction and a Transition.
O f course, the Preface (Vorrede) and the Introduction (Ein
leitung) of the Phenomenology are written entirely from the point
of view of Absolute Knowledge (für uns).
[The first two numbers indicate the page and line of the Hoff
meister edition (Hamburg: Meiner, 1952); the last tw o numbers
indicate the page and line of the English translation of Baillie
(second edition, London: Allen & Unwin, 1931). “PhG ” is used
as an abbreviation for the Phenomenology.]
PREFA CE
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
A The goal which Hegel proposes to reach:
the scientific System
1. Impossibility of a partial truth 9:2 67:2
2. T ruth is total and well-ordered knowl
edge 11:34 70:5
B. Point of departure: critique of the philoso
phy of the epoch and especially of that of
Schelling
i. General characterization of the epoch 12:27 7 I:9
2. Evidence for the coming of a new era 15:26 75-3
C. The road which leads to the goal: the PhG 19:16 79:3°
i. Substance as Subject 19:24 80:1
2. The system of Science 23:21 *5-3
263
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
3. The place of the PhG in the System
a. The PhG as Introduction to the
System 24:30 86:28
b. The PhG as first Part of the
System 28:18 9 I:Z 4
c. The PhG as science of the experi
ences of Consciousness 32:1 96:7
D. The means to attain the end: method
i. The historical method 35:5 100:6
2. The mathematical method 35:20 100:22
3. The philosophical or scientific method 39:10 105:5
4. The pseudo-philosophical methods
(1) . “Raisonnement” 4 8 :3 7 117:23
(2) . “Natural reason” o r “common
sense” 54:20 “ 4 :3 3
E. The result: public acceptance as criterion
of the truth 57:21 128:28
IN TRO DUCTION
HOFFMEISTER BAXLLIE
b. Dialectic of the nunc 81:18 151:27
N O T E on language: 82:7-18 152:22-34
Dialectic of the hie 82:19 152:35
c. Transition 82:28 153:8
2. The subject of Sensation: the abstract
UT
1>»
a. Introduction 82:39 153:20
b. Dialectic of the hic et nunc 83:15 I 5 3 : 37
c. Transition 83:40 154:25
Critical N O T E against Krug: 83:40-84:7 15 4 :2 5 -3 4
3. Sensation as a whole
a. Introduction 84:9 154:36
b. Dialectic of the nunc 85:18 156:16
Dialectic o f the hie 86:16 157:22
C. Conclusion
i. Summary 86:33 158:3
2. Critique of “naive realism*' 86:39 158:7
N O T E on Desire: 87:21-88:1 *58:33—
i 5 9 -*o
3. Transition 88:30 16O:I4
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
4. Perception as a whole 9 7 :1 9 172:19
NOTE: 9 8 :i-S i 7 3 : i 7 -* 2
C. Conclusion
1. Transition 9 9 :6 174:23
2. Critical Note against the philosophy of
common sense IOO: I J 176:1
266
Appendix: The Structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit
HOFFMEISTER ΒΑΠΧΙΕ
NOTE: 121:1—19 202:30-
2O3:12
(3). The World upside-down
(a). Introduction 121:20 203:13
(b). Dialectic 122:32 205:1
NOTES on the phi
losophy of na
ture: 122:4-13 204:2-13
122:37- 205:7-14
123:3
N OTES on crime 122:13-31 204:13-33
and punishment: 123- 3-7 205:15-19
123:31- 206:8-2 3
124:4
(c). Transition 124:26 2O7.7
c. Transition ” 4:33 207:15
N O TE: 125:3-9 207:28-34
C. Conclusion
i. Result of Chap. ΠΙ and Book I, and
transition to Chap. IV: the notion of
Life 125:20 208:i0
2. Summary of the first three Chaps, and
transition to Chap. IV and Book II: the
notion of self-consciousness 126:31 209:31
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Appendix: The Structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
(b). Internal Feeling: the
contemplative religious
attitude 162:30 2J 6: I 5
NOTE: 162:34-40 256.2O-28
(c). External Action: the
active religious attitude 164:36 259:2
(d). Self-sacrifice: the as
cetic religious attitude
i. Introduction 167:35 262.28
ii. The Monk 168:19 263.17
iii. The Priest 169:3 264:11
iv. The Layman 170:30 266:20
C Conclusion: Transition to the areligious at
titude described in Chap. V 171:28 267:27
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
(2) . The Description of
Things 185:29 284:18
NOTE: 186:32-36 *85:30-}}
(3) . Analysis: Specific Prop
erties 186.37 *85:34
(4) . Explication: Laws
(a) . Introduction 188:37 288:14
(b ) . Passive experience 189:24
289:1
NOTE: 189:27- 289:4-21
190:2
(c ) . Active experimenta
tion 191:15 291:6
NOTE: 191:3*- 291:24-
192:17 292:13
(d ) . Physical “Princi
ples” 192:17 292:14
b. The vitalist Biology (Kielmeyer,
etc.)
(1) . Introduction 192:37 293:4
(2) . Functional Relations 193:24 294:3
NOTE: i 9 4 ‘*7 -3 7 295.14-22
(3) . Teleology »95:7 296:1
NOTE: 197 *37- 299:14-
198:28 300:11
(4) . Internal “Principle” and
external Form
(a ) . Introduction 199:11 301:1
NOTE: 199:30-33 301:24-28
(b ) . The internal “Prin
ciple”
i. Introduction 199:40 301:35
ii. Sensibility, Irri
tability and Re
production 201:36 304:10
iii. The organic
Form *05:37 309:1
iv. Transition to
conception *07:13 3 IO:*7
NOTE: 209:24- 313:21-
210:35 315:5
(c ) . The external Form 210:36 3 1 5 :6
NOTE: 211:37- 316:20-
212:17 317:6
(d ) . General transition
to conception 212:18 3*7:7
270
Appendix: The Structure of th e Phenomenology of Spirit
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
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INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
B. Dialectic
i. ( = Chap. V, B, a) The Individual
( = the Particular) who envoys the
W orld ( = the Universal, = Society,
= State): Estheticism and brutaliza
tion in Pleasure
a. The Particular 262:3 384:2
b. The Universal 263:34 386:3
c. The Particular against the Uni
versal 265:7 387:27
d. Transition 266:9 388:35
( = Chap. V, B, b) The Individual who
criticizes the World: Utopia and Mad
ness in isolation
a. Introduction 266:2 I 391:3
b. The Universal 266:36 391:21
2 7 2
Appendix: The Structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit
HOFFMEISTER ΒΛΠΧΙΕ
NOTE: 267:11-22 3 9 *:34 -
392:11
c. The Particular 267:23 392:12
d. The Particular against the Uni
versal
(1). Introduction 268:4 392:34
(2). The Universal 268:25 393:18
(3). The Particular 270:26 396:1
NO TE: 271:10-25 396:27-
3 9 7 :4
(4). The conflict between the
two 2 7 2 :3 3 398:17
e. Transition 273:38 399:30
(= Chap. V, B, c). T he Individual
who wants to improve the World:
Reformism and the impotence of non
revolutionary intervention
a. Introduction
(1). Themes of i, 2, and 3 274:16 402:2
( 2). Theme of 3
(a). The reformist ideal
(the Particular) 274.26 402:12
NOTE: 2 7 4 :3 '- 402:20-23
27J.1
(b). The political reality
(the Universal) * 7 5 :1 7 403:14
NOTE: 273:20-23 403:17-21
b . Dialectic
(1). Introduction 276:7 404:10
(2). The Particular 276:31 40 4 :3 7
NOTE: 278:6-13 406:28-36
(3) . T he Universal 278:39 407:30
(4) . The Particular against the
Universal 279:29 408:28
NOTES: 279 : 39 - 409:1-6
280:5
280:30- 409:36-
281:13 410:27
c. Transition 281:14 410:28
chapter m ( = Chap. V , C ) : The M an of Letters.
A. Introduction 283:4 414:3
B. Dialectic
i. ( = Chap. V, C, a) The Individual who
without acting is content to speak*
*73
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
about the World and who pretends to
serve “eternal values”: the “Republic
of Letters” and the imposture of “ob
jectivity”
a. Introduction 285:8 4 1 9 -4
b. The idea which the Man of Let
ters has of himself
(i) . Innate Nature: talent 285:17 419:13
NO TE: 285:38- 419:36-
286:6 420:9
(2). Activity: the creation of
a work of literature 286:24 420:30
NOTES: 287:37- 422:16-27
288:6
288:36- 423:23-34
289:5
289:21-40 424:16-
4 2 5 :i
(3). The Result: the pure Joy
of the literary creation 290:9 425MO
c. The existential experience of the
Man of Letters
(1) . Introduction 290:31 4 *5:35
(2) . The literary W ork and
the pretension of “disinter
ested objectivity” 29«:13 426:25
NOTE: Ι 95 ·7_ ,ΐ 43i:i3-l8
(3). The appearance of Hon
esty 296:3 4 3 2 :1 4
(4). The Imposture 297.1 4 3 3 ·***
d. Transition and anticipated de
scription of the Citizen 300:3 4 3 7 ; 11
( = Chap. V, C, b) The Individual,
who, without acting, warns to dictate
his laws to the W orld: the Moralist
and the contradidons of moral Rigor
ism.
a. Introduction 301:ι6 440:2
b. Dialectic
(1) . Introduction 302:37 441:28
(2) . The morality of Verac
ity: the “naive” Moralist 303:9 4 4 * :4
(3). The morality of Charity:
the Romanticists and Jacobi 304:20 4 4 3 ; *3
*74
A ppendix: T h e Structure o f th e Phenomenology of Spirit
HOFFMEISTER BAILL1E
(4). The formalist morality:
Kant and Fichte 305:20 444:32
c. Transition 306:1 445:19
3. ( = Chap. V, C, c) The Individual who
wants to “understand" and “justify”
the (pre-revolutionary) World: the
Pseudo-philosopher ( = caricature of
the Wise Man) and the platitude of
Relativism
a. Introduction 306:8 446:3
b. Dialectic
(1). Introduction 307:8 447:13
(2). Legitimacy of private
property and of communism J07: «1 447:16
(3). Illegitimacy of both 307:25 447:35
(4). Legitimacy of both 308:29 449:11
c. Transition 308:32 449:14
NOTE: 308:34-40 449:17-22
G Transition: The Intellectual and the Citizen 309:1 449:23
B o o k I I ( = C h a p te rs V I a n d V II)
POLITICAL ATTITUDES: THE LOYAL CITIZEN AND
THE REVOLUTIONARY.
f i r s t s e c t io n ( = C h a p te r V I) :
D i a l e c t i c o f t h e h i s t o r i c a l reality
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
27S
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
b. Dialectic
( i ). Point of Departure
(a). The Universal: the
State and the Citizen 318:30 466: 24
(b). The Particular: the
Family 319:22 467: 26
(c). Relation between
the Family and the
State 320:9 468:23
(2). Movement
(a). Introduction 323:29 4 7 3 :4
(b). The Universal:
Government and W ar 3 *3-38 473 : H
(c). The Particular:
Husband and Wife,
Parents and Children,
Brother and Sister 3 *4 :3 7 4 7 4 : *5
(d). Conflict between the
Family and the State 3 *7:3 477 :* 7
(3). Result 328:12 479:6
2. ( = Chap. VI, A, b) Action in the
Pagan World: tragic destiny
a. Introduction
σ* P
330:37 484:3
b. Dialectic
( i ). Point of Departure 331:18 484:26
NOTE: 331:26-40 484:35-
485:14
(2). Movement:
(a). Introduction 33*: 37 486:20
(b). The Universal:
loyal action 333 ·** 486:26
(c). The Particular:
criminal action 334 :* 487:33
(d). Conflict and anni
hilation of the Particu
lar: tragic destiny 3 3 5 :*i 489:31
(3). Result
(a). Introduction 3 37:40 4 93:3
(b). The Universal: the
victory of the State j} 8 ;9 493:1*
(c). The Particular: the
revenge of the Family » 9 :5 494: *0
(d). Conflict and anni
hilation of the Uni-
276
Appendix: The Structure of the Phenom enology o f S pirit
HOFFMEISTER FAILLIE
versah personal power
(Alexander the Great) 3 3 9 :4 0 4 9 5 :* 4
c. Transition 342:6 498:18
3. ( = Chap. VI, A, c) The End of the
Ancient W orld and the Adumbration
of Christianity: The Roman Empire
a. Introduction: Transformation of
the (ancient) Citizen into the
(Christian) Bourgeois 342:3* 501:2
b. Dialectic: the origins of bour
geois or Christian existence
(1). Private law and the legal
person (corresponds to the
“Stoicism” of Chap. IV, B) 343 : 2 * 502:3
(2). Private Property (corre
sponds to the “Scepticism”
of Chap. IV, B) 344:6 502:34
(3). The Master of the
World: the Roman Em
peror and the Christian God 3 45:9 504:13
c. Transition to the Christian W orld 346:23 506:10
*77
INTRODUCTION TO THR R E A D I N G OF HEGEL
HOFFMEISTER ΒΛΠΧΙΕ
(2). The conflict of Good and
Evil 354: « 519:12
(3). The conflict of the State
and private Capital 3 5 4 :3 8 519:31
NOTE: 355:2*- 3* 520:22-36
(4). The class conflict: Nobil-
ity and the Third Estate 355:33 520:37
Movement
(1). Introduction 359:21 5*5:34
(2). Feudalism 360:6 526:30
N O TE on class-spirit: 361:20-35 528:27-
529:11
(3). Absolutism: Louis XIV
(a). Introduction 361:36 529:12
NOTE on the ex-
istendal function 362:i8- 530:2-
of language 363:10 531.6
(b). The Courtier 364:3! 533:6
(c). The transformation
of the nobleman into
the Bourgeois 365:29 534 :ï4
(d). The Bourgeois 366:27 535:*5
(4). Bourgeois Society: Louis
XV and John Law
(a). Introduction 3 6 7 :5 536:8
(b). The Poor Man 3 6 7 :3 5 537:6
NOTES: 368:15-19 537:30-34
368:3»- 538:20-26
3 6 9 :4
(c). The Rich Man 3 6 9 :5 538:27
(d). The Bohemian 370:6 540:3
d. Result: the decay of bourgeois
society
(1). Introduction 371:8 54*: *3
NOTES: 371:21—25 542:2-6
372:16-24 543:4-18
(2). Deception 37*:*5 543:*9
(3). Refinement 373: «5 544=*4
(4). Levity of spirit and vanity 374··32 564:8
3. ( = Chap. VI, B, I, b) Fideism and
Rationalism
a. Introduction 376:17 549:3
NOTES: 376:40- 550:i-l8
377:I4
377: 3*—4° 551:*-8
278
Appendix: The Structure of the Phenom enology of S p irit
HOFFMEISTER SAILLIE
b. Point of departure 378:6 55ΠΙ9
NOTE: 378:38- 552:19-28
379:5
c. Movement
(1). Introduction 380:1 553:34
(2). Faith developing itself in
itself: Theology 380:10 554:10
(3). Faith criticising the real
world: religious isolation 380:36 555:8
(4). Faith criticised by ration
alism 381:38 556:23
d. Result: the rationalism of the
17th century
(1). Introduction 382.1 556:27
(2). Theoretical rationalism 382:6 556:33
( 3). Existential rationalism 382:16 557:7
NOTE: 382:36- 5 5 7 :I9 ~
383:16 558:18
(4). Transition to the period
of Enlightenment 383:23 558:27
( = Chap. VI, B, II) Dialectic of the pre
revolutionary world: the period of En
lightenment
i. Introduction 383:27 559:3
2. ( = Chap. VI, B, II, a) Revolutionary
propaganda (atheistic)
a. Introduction 385:9 561:4
NOTE: 385:9-16 561:4-11
b. The negative content of propa
ganda
( i ). Imperceptible transforma
tion of the given world 385:29 561:26
NOTE: 387:11-17 563:29-36
(2). Open (verbal) struggle
against the given world 388:18 565:10
NOTE: 392:17-28 570: IO-2I
(3). Revolutionary Propa
ganda (atheistic) as seen by
(Bourgeois and Christian)
conformism 392:30 570:22
c. The positive content of propa
ganda
(1). Introduction 396:35 575*33
(2). Deism 3 9 7 -9 576:12
(3). Sensationalism 397:26 5 7 0 :3 5
279
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL·
HOFFMEISTER BAUXIE
(4). Utilitarianism 398:15 577:31
d. The result of propaganda
(1). Introduction 400:l6 580:16
(2). Deism 402:31 583:19
(3). Sensationalism 403:23 584:22
(4). Utilitarianism 404:23 585:32
e. Transition to revolutionary action 405:36 587:18
3. ( = Chap. VI, B, II, b) The Revolu
tionary Ideology
a. Introduction 4O7M 8 590:3
N O TE: 408: 22-33 591:19-35
b. Deism (Idealism) and Sensation
alism (Materialism) 408:34 591:36
N O TE: 410:23-31 594:4-13
c. Utilitarianism 410:32 594:14
d. Transition to the revolutionary
W orld: realization of the Chris
tian ideal on earth 4 12:3° 596:27
D. ( = Chap. VI, B, III) Dialectic of the Revo
lutionary World: Rousseau, the French
Revolution, and the Advent of Napoleon
i. Introduction 4 *4 :4 599:3
2. First revolutionary stage: absolute
Freedom and Anarchy 414:14 599:*5
3. Second revolutionary stage: Terror
and Dictatorship 416:28 602:20
4. Third revolutionary stage: the birth
of the post-revolutionary State 419:31 606:18
E. Transition to the Contemporary (Post-
revolutionary) World 420:29 607:23
c h a p te rm ( = C h a p . V I, C ) : T h e C o n te m p o ra ry E p o c h :
G e rm a n P h ilo s o p h y a n d th e N a p o le o n ic E m p ire .
A. Introduction 423:4 613:2
B. Dialectic
i. ( = Chap. VI, C, a) The anthropology
of Kant and Fichte
a. Introduction 424:25 615:3
b. T he anthropology of Kant
( i ). The postulates
(a) . Moral Consciousness
425:25 616:14
(b ) . Harmony between
duty and reality 426:3 616:34
280
Appendix: The Structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit
HOFFMEISTER SAILLIE
(c). The infinite Task 427:10 6l8:i2
(2). T h e theory of action
(a). Introduction 429:8 620:28
(b). Plurality of duties 429:23 62i:il
(c). God as guarantor of
morality 430:3 0*1:35
(d). Grace and recom
pense in the Beyond 43ï :8 6*3:17
(3). The consequences 4 3 i:2 9 624:6
c. The anthropology of Fichte 4 3 2:3 2 625:18
j. ( = Chap. VI, C, b) T he self-destruc
tion of the anthropology of Kant and
Fichte
a. Introduction 4 3 4 :9 629:2
b. Dialectic
(1). First postulate
(a). Firststage 435^9 630:10
(b). Second stage 4 3 6 :9 631:16
(c). Third stage 4 37:3 632:16
(d). Result 4 3 7 :22 631:36
(2). Second Postulate
(a). Introduction 4 3 7 :3 7 633:15
(b). First stage 4 3 7 :4 0 633:18
(c). Second stage 439:18 635:9
(d). Third stage 4 3 9 :3 4 635:15
(e). Result 440:10 636:5
(3). Consequence: the divine
legislator
(a). Firststage 4 4 0 :3 7 636:36
(b). Second stage 4 4 I: 3° 637=37
(c). Third stage 4 4 2 :5 638:17
c. Transition 44^7 639:4
( = Chap. VI, C, c) Jacobi, Roman
ticism (Novalis) and the advent of
Hegel
a. Introduction 445=5 644:3
b. The anthropology of Jacobi
(1). Introduction 445:33 644:31
( 2). Personal Conviction 4 47:3 646:16
NOTE: 4 4 7 :I 4” 25 646:30-
647:6
( 3). Recognition b y others 449:10 649:4
NOTE: 4 5 i: 9 ~ 28 651:22-
652:8
281
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
HOFFMEISTER BAILLIE
(4). Individual Freedom 4 J i ;*9 652:9
NOTE: 453:34- 654:36-
454:26 6 5 5 :3 6
(5). Transition: the autarchy
of the Individual 455:3« 657:21
Romantic anthropology
(Novalis)
(1). Introduction 456:25 658:19
(2) . Individualism 4 5 « :34 658:28
(3) . Language as expression of
individuality 458:19 660:3I
N O TE: 458:30- 66l:8-24
4 5 9 :4
(4). The sovereignty of the
genius and the annihilation
of the isolated Individual 460:22 663:15
N O TE: 46i:24-28 664:28-33
German criticisms of the Na
poleonic Empire and its “justifi
cation” by Hegel
(1) . Introduction 463Ü6 667:7
(2) . The Hypocrisy of the
criticism 464:12 668:15
N O TE: 465:24-3« 670:9-22
(3). The pettiness of judgment 466:9 671:3
NOTES: 467:21-36 672:25-
673:6
467:41-
468:9 673:11-20
(4). The Hegelian Justifica
tion: the universal and ho
mogeneous State founded
by Napoleon terminates the
historical evolution of hu
manity and makes possible
the realization of Wisdom 470.22 676:19
se c o n d s e c t io n ( = Chap. V II ) :
282
A ppendix: The Structure o f th e Phenomenology of Spirit
HOFFMEISTER ΒΛΠΧΙΕ
B. Religion, as it will be described in Chap.
VII, that is to say, as social ideology 474:39 087:9
C. Theme of Chap. VII 476:14 688:37
N O TE on the structure of the PhG 476:28- 689:16-
477*13 *9 0 *
ch a p te r IV ( = C h a p . V II, A ) : T h e id e o lo g ie s o f s o c ie tie s th a t a r e
d o m in a te d b y th e D e s ire a n te rio r to th e F ig h t fo r re c o g n itio n : p rim i
tiv e s o c ie tie s a n d a n c ie n t E g y p t ( C h a p . V I I , A , h a s n o e q u iv a le n t in
C h a p . V I, f o r th e re H e g e l d o e s n o t d e a l w ith p o litic a l fo rm a tio n s
a n t e r i o r t o t h e polis.)
A. Introduction 48 i : 3 696:2
B . ( = Chap. VII, A, a) Dialectic of the social
ideologies of Sensation and of Desire with
out Fighting or Work: the Henotheism of
pacific food-gathering societies
1. Introduction 483:10 699:3
2. Dialectic 483:27 6 9 9 :1 1
3. Transition 484:30 700:33
C. ( = Chap. VU, A , b) Dialectic of the social
ideologies of Perception and of the realiza
tion of Desire through Fighting (without
recognition by the Slave): the Totemism of
hunter-warriors
1. Introduction 485:3 701.3
2. Dialectic 485:9 702:10
3. Transition 485:31 703:7
D. ( = Chap. VII, A, c) Dialectic of the social
ideologies of Understanding and of the
realization of Desire through W ork (with
out recognition of a Master): art and re
ligion of Egypt
1. Introduction 486:16 704=3
2. Dialectic
a. The symbols of the product of
work: the pyramid and the
obélisque, the mummy in the
pyramid and the sun shining on
the obélisque 486:21 704.8
b. The symbols of the worker
(1). Introduction 486:38 704:26
NOTE: 487:11-15 705:6-11
(2). The Temple 487:23 705:20
(3). The Statue 488:1 706:3
283
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL·
HOFFMEISTER SAILLIE
(4). The “Tiergehause" 488:28 706:32
c. The linguistic symbols which
emerge out of work: the Sphynx 488:36 707:7
3. Transition 489:14 707:26
by the Fight for recognition: the art and literature of the pagan
Masters (Greece). (Chap. VII, B corresponds to Chap. VI, A).
A. Introduction 49°:3 709:3
NOTE: 492:8-15 71 i : r5—33
B. ( = Chap. VII, B, a) Dialectic of the social
ideologies of Desire in the framework of
the Fight for recognition
1. Introduction 493:3 713:3
2. Dialectic
a. The plastic Ans
( i ). The Statue and the
Temple 493·11 713:11
(2) . The anthropomorphic
God 493:33 714:1
(3) . The Artist 494:28 715:4
b. Poetic Language: the religious
Hymn 496:1 716:29
N O TE on the Oracle: 496:29- 717:25-
498:21 719:35
c. The religious Cult
(1 ) . Introduction 498:33 720:13
(2) . The symbol of Desire:
the Mysteries 499:3 720:25
(3) . The symbol of the Fight:
the Sacrifice 499:23 721:10
(4) . The symbol of Work:
the Ritual 501:16 723:25
(5) . Transition 501:31 724:6
C. ( = Chap. Vn, B, b) Dialectic of the social
ideologies of the Fight for recognition
1. Introduction 502:11 725:3
NOTES: 502:14-38 725:6-33
503:8-12 726:11-15
2. Dialectic
a. The Bacchanalia 503:28 726:33
NO TE: 504:1-7 727:11-17
b. The Athlete and the Olympic
Games 5°4:34 728:12
284
Appendix: The Structure of the Phenom enology of S p irit
HOFFMEISTER SAILLIE
c. Poetic language: lyrical poetry jo j : h 719.8
. ( = Chap. VH, B, c) Dialectic of the social
ideologies of W ork in the framework of the
Struggle for Recognition
i. The Epos
a. Introduction 50&19 73, : 3
b. Dialectic
(1). The W orld of the £pos:
coalescence through war 507:8 73 * ’33
(2) T he Man of the Epos:
epic action 508:6 7 33:8
(3) The G od of the Epos:
epic destiny 509:15 7 3 4 :3 0
2. Tragedy
a. Introduction 5IO :iI 736 :3 7
b. Dialectic
(1). The W orld of Tragedy:
the conflict of the Particular
( = the family) and the Uni
versal ( = the State)
(a). The Chorus 511:24 737:18
(b). The Hero 5I2:i8 738:17
(c). The Spectators 512:27 738:37
(2). The Man of Tragedy: the
tragic action of the Master 5 I 2 : 33 7 39:6
NOTE: 512:38- 739:11-19
5 *3 : I 5
(3). The God of Tragedy:
tragic destiny and the H y
pocrisy of the Master 515:20 74ï : , 6
3. Comedy
a. Introduction 5 *7 -3 » 743-8
b. Dialectic
(1). The W orld of Comedy:
Bourgeois Society 5 *7 :3 7 7 4 5 : ΐ4
(2). The Man of Comedy: the
comic action of the Bour
geois 5x8:18 746 : i
(3) The God of Comedy: the
comic destiny and the frank
ness of bourgeois “individ
ualism” 520:4 7 48:3
285
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL
HOFFMEISTER BiniTff
NOTES: 540:9-14 7 7 4 Π Ο -Ι4
5 4 i : 7- 775:16-
5 4 3 :i 5 7 7 8 :î
d. The Christian Community:
Church and State
(1). Introduction 543:16 7 7 8 :}
(2). Faith: Saint Paul 543:30 778:10
(3). The Eucharist and the
Church: Catholicism 544:37 78 o:j
(4). The “truth” of Christian
ity: Christian theo-logy is
in fact Hegelian anthropo-
logy 546:32 781:19
C Transition to atheistic Wisdom 547:16 783:8
A. Introduction 549:3 7 8 9 :3
B. Dialectic
i. Point of departure: the Philosopher
a. Introduction 550:10 79 o :i6
b. Recapitulation of the dialectic of
the PhG
(1). Chaps. V -V I,B 550:41 791:13
(2). Chap. VI, C 5 5 2 :i 4 793:3
(3). Chap. VII 553:5 793:30
c. Transition to Wisdom 556:1 7 9 7 :i 9
2. Movement: the Wise Man
a. The notion of the Wise Man 556:15 79 7 :3 4
b. The reality of the Wise Man
(1). Introduction 557:10 79 8 :3 4
(2). Reality 557:23 799:11
(3). Time 558:10 800:10
NOTE: 559:16-19 801:28-32
(4). History 559:20 801:33
c. The activity of the W ise Man 561:5 803:37
3. The Result: Science 561:37 804:36
NOTE: 562:1-11 805:5-17
287
INTRODUCTION TO
THE READING OF HEGEL
LECTURES O N THE
PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT
ALEXANDRE KOJÈVE
During the years 1933-1939, the Marxist political philosopher Alexandre
Kojève brilliantly explicated-through a series of lectu res-the philoso
phy of Hegel as it was developed in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Based
on the major work by Kojève, this collection of lectures was chosen by
Bloom to show the intensity of Kojève’s study and thought and the depth
of his insight into Hegel'sPhenomenology of Spirit.
More important, for Kojève was above all a philosopher and not an ide
ologue, this profound and venturesome work on Hegel will expose the
readers to the excitement of discovering a great mind in all its force and
power.
Alexandre Kojève was born in Russia and educated in Berlin. After
World War II he worked in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs as one
of the chief planners for the Common Market while also continuing his
philosophical pursuits.
Allan Bloom is Professor of the Committee on Social Thought at the Uni
versity of Chicago. He is the editor of Politics and the Arts: Letter to M.
D’Alembert on the Theatre, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.